Android Scam
by CoyoteLoon
Summary: Jenny is bummed because she's the only robot in school - until she meets a student who's an android. Except he isn't an android. Sort of. Things get more confusing when the Cluster gets involved. (complete)
1. Ain't Never Had a Friend Like Me

Disclaimer – The characters in this story are from the cartoon "My Life as a Teenage Robot" and are completely NOT owned by me.  My sole creations are the characters of Drew, and the Cluster robots.

* * *

ANDROID SCAM

A "My Life as a Teenage Robot" Fanfic

Chapter One – Ain't Never Had a Friend Like Me

* * *

The stars shone brilliantly in the perfect darkness of space; millions upon millions of blazing white pinpricks stretched to infinity in every direction.  Well, not every direction; if you looked hard enough, you could see the circle of the Earth, cut out of the stars, a globe with a splashes of white and yellow lights all its own.  A few moments later, the curve of the planet's surface flashed into view, highlighted by the pale blues and pinks of the atmosphere as the sun peeked over the horizon, ushering in another new day.  The sunlight cut a wider slice, revealing oceans, continents, forests and cities ….

And a blazing streak coming from deep space, bright white and orange, screaming towards the planet at high speed.  High speed?  Amazing speed.  Terrific speed.  Mind-boggling speed.  In no time at all the blazing object entered the Earth's atmosphere and formed a raging fireball.  Seething plasma sprayed off in all directions, forming a shock wave through the stratosphere.  Its trajectory focused in on a mid-sized city in North America.  Unsuspecting citizens, out walking the dog, getting the newspaper, watering the lawn, were startled by the staccato thunder of sonic booms and look skyward to see a flaming ball slice across the sky.  It was heading straight for the city.  Straight for the heart of town.  Straight for the _high school_.  The fireball took aim for the front entrance ….

And came to a full stop, six inches above concrete sidewalk.  A wash of wind and exhaust blew out in a circle, nearly knocking over a few dozen students who lingered by the bus stop, less than eager to head inside and start the school week.  A few looked stunned.  Some gazed in awe.  Most seemed simply annoyed.  The dust cleared, revealing a metallic humanoid shape, with extending wings and imposing rocket boosters, settling gently to the ground.  Smoke hissed from the remnants of the extreme heat.  With a sleek whirring noise, the wings and boosters fantastically retracted into its body, leaving an impressive figure.  A six-and-a-half-foot tall robot.   With pale blue trim.  And _pigtails._

"Oh, wow, I am _so late!!!"_

One of the students rushed up to the robot, straightening his shirt collar and smoothing back his spiked red hair.  "Awesome entrance, Jenny," he said.  "Too bad you didn't make it _fifteen minutes ago!"_

"Brad, I am _so sorry!_  Mom had me out on a stupid wild goose …"

The ring of a school bell cut her off and startled Brad.   "Inside!  Hurry!"  Brad grabbed her arm to guide her towards the front door.  Her fresh-from-reentering-the-atmosphere arm.  They rushed through the front doors of the high school as Brad waved his now painfully red hand.

Jenny grimaced.  "Brad, I'm _sorry!_"

"Hand – not – important," Brad managed through his clenched teeth.  They rushed down the main corridor past the freshmen lockers – no time for that now.  They were officially late.  They snuck towards first period like cat burglars.  "Geometry.  We were going to compare homeworks.  I think I've got 'em all, but number seven was tough.  Did you get a parallelogram?  You got the assignment done, didn't you?"

"No problem.  Got it safe and sound right here," said Jenny, patting her belly.  She reached for a small blue bolt, about where her belly button would be, when it started to flash and emit a buzzing sound.  _Oh, great.  Perfect timing._  A small door in her chest slid open, and out shot a contraption that expanded into a television monitor.  The picture snapped on instantly, showing a wild-haired woman with thick glasses and a yellow lab coat.  She frowned out of the screen towards Jenny.

"XJ-9!" she shouted.  "I am waiting for your report!"

Jenny waved her hands in front of the screen.  "Mom!  _Keep it down!_  I'm going to get caught!"

"Young lady, do not tell me to 'keep it down'.  This is of paramount importance!  What did you find in Sector 358?"

"Mom, I'm late for geometry."

"Did you confirm the readings from my monitors?"

"Arghhh!  Mom, you know what I found out there?  I found space.  Rocks!  Dust!  And a stupid comet!  There was nothing out there!

Brad peeked over Jenny's shoulder.  "Mrs. Wakeman, what do you know about parallelograms?"

"I know Sector 358 is shaped like a parallelogram," she huffed, folding her arms.

"I've gotta _go_, Mom, I'm going to get in trouble."

A voice boomed from behind them.  "Correction.  You _are_ in trouble."

Jenny groaned and shut off her monitor.  As it folded back into her chest, she and Brad turned around to face their Vice Principal Raczinski, a short, stout man with thick glasses and gray hair.  He made a grand production of jotting down their names on a yellow pad of paper.  "One tardy slip for you, sir," he said, handing Brad a small piece of paper.  "And one for you, Miss XJ-9.  My, my.  I'm going to have to get some of these printed up with your name on them.  This makes what, four this month?  So were we out saving the world this fine Monday morning?"

"Yes.  I mean, not really."  Jenny stammered.  "I mean, I had a mission but it turned out to be really nothing …"

"Well, your new mission is … education."  The vice principal walked ten feet and gestured towards the door of geometry class.  Jenny trudged into the room, disgusted.  _Ten lousy feet away._  And the geometry teacher was late!  _If Mom hadn't called, I would've been home free!_  Brad ambled in behind her, and they took their usual desks.

The rest of the students were already seated, relaxed, and chatting.  Jenny opened a door in her abdomen and briefly rummaged around.  _I know it's in here somewhere._  Most of her books were back in her locker, but she had her Geometry text with her.  _There it is!_  She pulled it out and … and it was mildly smoldering.  Apparently textbooks didn't withstand re-entry too well.  _Oh no._  She blew on it and waved it.  _Better idea._  She unfolded her left hand, and extended a small fan from her wrist to cool off the text.  That's when she realized that the entire class was staring at her.  A few snorts and chuckles broke out.

"I say, Jenny, that _is_ a bold fashion statement, but I don't believe the scorched look is in this season."

Jenny winced as a new round of giggles started.  She quickly unfolded a small mirror from her right arm.  Sure enough, she had visibly blackened scorch marks on her face, pigtails, and body from her fiery arrival ten minutes ago.  Nothing a little steel wool wouldn't clean up later.  She slowly turned to her left, where two very fashion-conscious girls sat, filing their nails.  "Uh – h-hey there Brit.  Tiff.  Heh, heh.  Hot stuff, huh?"

Brit's attention never left her perfectly manicured fingernails.  "Mmmm, yes, 'hot stuff' indeed.  Rah-ther like a steel mill.  Or a garbage incinerator."  The tall thin brunette glanced at her shorter friend, decked out heavily with trendy accessories and makeup.  "Wouldn't you say, Tiff?"

"Oh, snap.  Absolutely."  Tiff inhaled deeply and placed a finger to her forehead, pretending to think deeply.  "And I just lo-o-ove your perfume.  What do you call it … 'Burning Tire'?"

Brad winced.  This was painful just to watch.  The Krust cousins were scoring hits on his friend Jenny early today.  He tried to pass her a reassuring glance, but Jenny wouldn't make eye contact.  She slid down in her chair as much as her six-foot-plus metal frame would let her.  _Please,_ thought Brad, _don't let the desk catch fire.  _ But by then Jenny's cooling systems had reduced her temperature to normal – even if her face was flushing blue.

"All right, all right, enough, enough."  The geometry teacher strolled through the door and slapped his briefcase on the desk.  The giggles and chatter died down as he rushed down the last of his coffee and started writing on the chalkboard.  "We're already late, people.  Everybody pass your assignments forward and turn to the following section."

Papers rustled as the students passed their geometry assignments forward.  As a bunch of papers reached Jenny's desk, she flipped to the back cover of her textbook, where her assignment was completed, folded, and ready.  And charred beyond recognition.

"_No!"_ she shrieked.  She tried smoothing the paper and scraping off the soot.  It didn't help.  Jenny gulped, and carried her stack of papers to the teacher's desk.  "Umm … Mr. Snitzenburg?  I have a little problem."  She laid her half-blackened assignment on the desk in front of the teacher.  "I did the homework, but it got a little … burned on the way to school this morning."

"It's always something," said the teacher, rolling his eyes.  "I ran out of pencils.  I lost my textbook.  My homework burned up on re-entry."  He squinted at Jenny's paper.  "Well, you did something, but I certainly can't grade this.  Since I'm in a good mood, instead of simply giving you an 'F', I'll give you an extra assignment.  Due tomorrow morning."

"B-but we had all weekend for _this_ assignment!" said Jenny.  As soon as the words were out of her mouth, she knew she wasn't winning this argument.  "Yes, Mr. Snitzenburg.  Thank you."

"And since you're already up here, Miss XJ-9, would you be so kind as to solve the problem I've put on the board?"  He handed her a piece of chalk, and she shuffled up to the chalkboard.  _Argh._  She felt every pair of eyes in the room burning a hole into her back.  She tried to brush some of the scorched carbon off of her metallic skin while she analyzed the problem.  _All right, this isn't too hard.  Just get this over with and get back to my desk._  Prove that these two lines are perpendicular.  Piece of cake.  She started writing the answer on the board –

And the room was disrupted by a loud rattling, grinding sound.  Jenny clenched her teeth.  It was coming from her shoulder!  She tried ignoring it, but the rattling sound didn't go away.  The class broke into more laughter.  The teacher's annoyance grew by the second.

"Miss XJ-9!  _Is_ there something wrong?!?"

"Ah, no – " Jenny chuckled nervously – "I think it's just a piece of, um, space rock.  From this morning.  Heh heh.  Sorry."

"Well," the teacher replied, "clean it out and finish the problem."

_Horror._  "Yes, Mr. Snitzenburg."  Jenny reached over with her left hand, and grabbed her right arm at the shoulder.  A few motors and clamps whirred and hummed.  _Snap. Twist. Pop._  Her right arm came off in her hand.  Sure enough, there were bits of dust and small comet debris lodged inside.  She tapped her separated arm against the side of the teacher's desk, over the wastebasket, as if she were cleaning out a pencil sharpener.  The class howled, and the geometry teacher grumbled with irritation.  Jenny seriously thought about deploying one of her many particle beam weapons, blasting a really, _really_ deep hole in the floor, and jumping in.

* * *

Outside, in the school parking lot, one of the seniors drove in at the wheel of a gorgeous red sports car that his Dad had just bought him.  So what if he was late?  Hey, with a car like this, nothing else mattered.  He parked it across three spots – couldn't have any of these other loser cars scratching the paint on this baby.  He hopped out and strutted around to the front with a cloth rag, buffing off any speck or insect he could find.  There had to be at least twenty layers of wax on the body.  It sparkled like a perfect ruby.  He casually strolled along the side, lovingly wiping any dust away.  The senior grinned into the side mirror, squeezed a wad of hair gel onto a pocket comb, and worked it into his do.  _The best car for the best guy.  Ohhhhh yeah._

He didn't even notice the high-pitched whistling sound that came from overhead.  He _did_, however, notice the bowling-ball sized metal sphere that slammed down into the hood of his car at two hundred miles an hour.  He dropped to his knees and started sobbing as oil and steam sprayed out from the front of his ruined car.  He didn't see the metal sphere crack open, and he didn't see a small, insect-sized object fly out.

It looked a little like a wasp – a robotic wasp, at that.  It flew away from the crash site, whirring and buzzing, and circled the air a few times.  Then it turned, and flew towards the high school building.

* * *

Jenny punched a hole in her locker door in disgust.  She was in a vile mood.  The day was already a write-off.  One locker door wasn't going to make that much difference.  Jenny slumped against it.  Brad rummaged through his own junk two lockers over, trying to find his notes for his next class with one hand, finishing a donut with the other.  Jenny retracted her right hand into her arm, extended a polishing tool, and started working on what was left of the scorch marks.

"I can't stand it!" she groaned.  "I was up early today.  I spent an hour getting ready for school.  And then my mother sends me off on some stupid alien hunt!  She was all like, 'My sensors are picking up Cluster activity, young lady!'  But there was just some stupid comet.  She's deliberately trying to ruin my life!"

Brad finished off his snack.  "Wow.  An alien hunt sounds pretty cool!"  A glance from Jenny told him that was not the right thing to say right now.

Jenny just rolled her eyes and kept on going.  "And then – oh, and then the teacher makes the whole class laugh at me!!!"

"So you had a rough start to the day.  It happens to everyone."

"No, it doesn't.  _Everyone_ doesn't dismantle their arms in front of the class.  _Everyone_ doesn't crush doorknobs with their bare hands.  _Everyone_ doesn't pick up radio stations with their hair.  You just don't know what it's like to be the only robot in school, Brad.  Nobody does.  Sometimes – sometimes it just really stinks."

Brad started paying a little closer attention.  She sounded pretty down this time, and he worried a bit for his best friend.  Part of him couldn't understand it.  Jenny led the kind of life that everybody would _dream_ of.  He mentally ticked off the reasons.  Reason one, she was a robot.  Enough said.  Reason two, she flew around the world saving lives and fighting bad guys and blowing stuff up.  Reason three, she was a robot!  _Did I mention she was a robot?_  Her arms and legs had more contraptions and weapons and firepower than an aircraft carrier!  Who wouldn't want to be able to shoot lasers out of their eye sockets?  To Brad, it seemed the most obvious thing in the world.  Yet Jenny had all that, and she wasn't happy.  She'd come back from destroying an alien armada, and head to the corner pizza joint – even though she couldn't eat pizza.  She'd rescue a bunch of coal miners from a cave-in, and then stop at the newsstand on the way home to buy a copy of _Teen Blab Magazine._  She'd rather spend a day at the mall than a day fighting ninjas.  Geez, who wouldn't rather fight ninjas?

Jenny sighed, and turned to Brad.  "Brad, don't get me wrong.  It's just that sometimes, I think it would be great if there was just one other robot like me around here."

Brad may not have understood why Jenny was frustrated, but she was.  "C'mon, Jen.  I'll walk you to your next class.  Just pretend first period didn't even happen."

She smiled.  "Didn't mean to yell at you.  I just needed to vent."

"What does she need to vent?" asked a mildly British accent from behind.  "Should we put on gas masks?"  Brit appeared out of the hallway crowd, looking ready for a fashion shoot.  She placed one gloved hand on her hip, while the other wiped a streak from Jenny's locker door, just below the hole.  "Vandalizing school property?  Tsk, tsk, dear."  Her loyal minion Tiff, never far behind, grinned like a hyena.

Brad rolled his eyes.  Brit and Tiff Krust were at the top of the social totem pole in high school; they not only _were_ popular, they _defined_ popular.  They could make you or break you.  And to the Krust cousins, breaking was a lot more fun.  Jenny's eagerness to fit in made her an easy target.  "Don't you two have somewhere else to be?" he mumbled.

Jenny grabbed her locker door nervously.  "It's no p-problem.  I was just going to fix it.  See?"  The tip of her index extended and  ignited, forming a small welding torch.

"Careful with that lighter, robo-dweeb," snickered Tiff.

"Yes, do be careful or you'll ignite the oil slick in Tiff's hair."

_Huh?_  The voice came from a locker on the other side of the hallway.

The freshman turned from his locker door, shaking his head.  He walked over towards Jenny, Brad, Brit, Tiff and the small assortment of other students who had gathered around to watch Jenny's humiliation.  He waved his arm in the air under his nose.  "Whew!  So, Tiff, you getting a good price buying that stuff by the gallon?  You little Goth rodeo clown, you."

Anger flashed in Tiff's heavily lined eyes.  _Nobody talks to me that way!_  The blond kid didn't notice, or, more likely, noticed and didn't care.  He smiled back at Tiff's glare and waved at Brit, then eased his hands into the pockets of his baggy jeans.   "Brit!  Haven't seen you since summer school!"

Jenny and Brad exchanged a look.  The group of students murmured.  Brad smiled.  "_Summer school?!?"_

"Yes, er, well."  Brit smoothed the lapel of her tailored jacket.  "Hello there, Drew.  We _were_ having a private conversation here before you so rudely interrupted.  So hello and good-bye."  The look in her eyes said:  _That's not a suggestion.  Get lost._

"Oh sure, sorry about that," said Drew, folding his hands across his chest.  "_Very_ sorry."  He took a couple of steps away, then turned around and interrupted Brit again.  "Hey, what happened to your accent?"

Brit started losing her patience.  "I _said_ good-bye, creep."

Drew smiled.  "Cool, you lost your New _Joisey_ accent.  And your lisp!  The speech therapy worked great.  You used to sound like Sylvester the Cat."  He waved good-bye with his fingertips.  "See you in the funny papers, _puthhhy_ cat."  He sprayed the words, cartoon-style.

Jenny was amazed.  For a moment, Brit, the most popular girl in high school, and her personal tormentor, was struck speechless.  The color drained from her face.  And the students gathered around were snickering at _her_.  Jenny hid a smile behind her hand.  She didn't dare laugh.  But she was enjoying this.  It didn't take long for Brit to recompose herself back to her regal self.  "Tiff, I think we've spent enough time in loser-burgh for one day.  Let's go."

"Yeah," Tiff parroted.  She shot an evil look at Drew.  "See you later, _Android._"

Jenny's pigtails nearly shot off of her head.

_What did she just call him?_

With Brit and Tiff gone, the crowd dispersed back into the hallway traffic.  Drew had walked back over to his locker to grab a notebook.  Brad came over, grinning.  "Dude!  I've never seen anybody tell off the Krusts like that before!"  He shook his head.  "You are in _serious_ trouble.  Those two are connected."

Drew seemed only mildly concerned.  "Connected?  Yeah, I'm pretty sure I'll never be elected as homecoming queen.  I'll live."   _Until Tiff gets the football team to pound me into a pulp.  Wouldn't be the first time my big mouth got me into trouble.  Heck, it wouldn't be the first time this month._  "Man, but those two love to hear themselves talk.  I guess I've seen you guys around school, but I've never said 'hi' before.  I'm Drew."

"Hey, Drew.  I'm Brad."  The two boys shook hands.  "And this is my friend Jenny."

"Hey, Jen –"  Drew's eyes widened as he looked up and realized who he was talking to.   "- Holy smoke.  You're the robot girl!"  Jenny was used to that kind of reaction by now.  It embarrassed her a bit, but it was better than screams of terror.  She tucked one leg behind the other and gave a little wave.

"I saw you on TV last week," continued Drew.  "Sheesh, you stopped a live volcano!  You shot two – bolts of something – out of your hands and sealed up the crater.  You saved southern Italy!"

"Well, a girl's gotta do what a girl's gotta do".

"And the week before that, when that Mob Boss tried to rob the Federal Reserve with an army tank.  You ripped that thing apart like a soda can.  And the week before that, you saved a cruise ship from sinking in the Bermuda Triangle!"

Jenny chuckled awkwardly.  "Heh, heh, … what can I say?  It's been a busy month."

"I mean, you broke a tank with your fists.  That was the most amazing thing I've ever seen!"

Brad threw his arms up.  "That's what I keep saying!"  Then he noticed the clock on the wall.  "Oh, man.  Two minutes to next class.  I've gotta split."  He quickly grabbed a few things from his locker and slammed the door.  "You gonna be okay, Jen?"

"Wha?  Oh, sure.  History is just down the hall.  See you after school."  Brad sprinted off and turned the corner.  Jenny turned back to Drew.  "Wow, I've never seen Brit embarrassed like that before.  It was actually pretty funny.  How did you know all that stuff about her?"

"Oh, we actually were in summer school together two years ago.  I missed a couple of months of the school year.  Brit – well, let's just say that she studies _Cosmo_ harder than she studies Algebra."  Drew laughed.  "She and her buddies were snobs then, and they're snobs now.  They treat everyone like garbage if you're not part of their 'little club'."

"Yeah, they can make life pretty miserable sometimes," said Jenny.  "Especially when you're a six foot tall metal freak."  _Why am I telling him this?_  Jenny wondered, even as she spoke._  Guess I just wasn't done venting yet._

_Why is she telling me this?_  Drew wondered.  He had a pretty quick mind, and it was starting to rev up to full speed.  So the robot girl was getting picked on by the popular students.  Well, break out the Kleenex.  _Welcome to my world.  Deal with it_.  He wasn't interested in other people's sob stories, but now his curiosity was bubbling.  "I don't get it.  You've saved everybody's life in this school at least a dozen times.  Aren't you, like, a celebrity around here?"

"Hah!  Not likely."  Jenny folded her arms.  Apparently she was _not_ done venting.  "Half the people I save don't even thank me.  They see a metal monster and freak out."  She finally realized what she must have sounded like.  "Oh, man.  I just met you and all I've done is dump grief on you.  I'm sorry."

"Naw, forget it," said Drew.  "Actually, I sort of know the feeling."

_No way!_  thought Jenny.  "Is that why the popular kids don't like you?  Because you're an android?"

_Holy – !_  It was a good thing that Drew was facing his locker at that instant, because his eyeballs nearly shot out of his head.  _Did she just ask if I was a freaking android?!?!_  He coughed a couple of times and said, "Sorry, I missed that.  What did you say?"

"I heard Tiff call you 'Android' when she walked off.  So are you?"

Drew said nothing for a few seconds that seemed to stretch into hours.  He looked into Jenny's face and her eyes.  She might be a robot, but you could read the emotion on her face like a billboard.  She wanted to hear him say 'yes'.  His mind raced, and he made a decision.  He fought back a wicked grin.  _I can't believe I'm going to do this._

"Whyyyyy – yes.  Yes, I am.  I kind of don't like to talk about it," Drew said, rolling his eyes to achieve a sad-puppy look.  "Yeah, the Krust cousins found out during summer school.  And they don't much like androids.  Or robots.  But I don't have to tell you that."

Jenny was practically beaming.  "Oh, wow.  I can't believe it!  I was sure that I was the only robot in school.  This is amazing!"

There weren't many kids left in the hall, but Drew still hushed his voice.  "Well, it's really not common knowledge.  Probably for the best.  Don't want to make people too uncomfortable."  _Okay.  Calm down.  Gotta keep this under control._

"You sure look human,"  continued Jenny.  "I mean, really human."

Drew pinched his cheek between his fingers.  "It looks almost real, doesn't it?"

"Wow – where were you manufactured?"

_Uh-oh._  "Um, well, where were _you_ manufactured?"

"I was built in my Mom's laboratory."

"Hey!  My Mom manufactured me too!"  _Took her nine months!  That's true enough, isn't it?_

The bell rang to sound everyone off to their next class.  Jenny didn't want to leave, but she didn't want two tardy slips in one day.  "The bell!  Nuts, I've gotta go!"

"Wait a sec," said Drew.  _And now for the coup de grace._  There was a reason he thought he might get away with this.  "When is your lunch hour?"

"Fourth period," answered Jenny.

"Mine too.  I usually go outside, because well, of course, I don't _eat_.  Have you ever played baseball before?"

"Well, just with Brad and his little brother.  Not in a real game with other kids, though."

"A bunch of us are going to play a little pick-up out in the schoolyard.  We can always use another player.  What do you say?"

The whole day had been such a disaster, such a string of humiliations, such a waste up to this point that Jenny had been ready to wallow in her somber mood for the rest of the week.  Now she was actually being invited to join a group of teenagers and _have fun_.  By another teenage robot.  Correction – android.  Heck, that didn't matter.  "What do I say?  I say I'll see you outside at lunch!  Thanks, Drew!"

"Well, hey," said Drew, pleased with himself.  "We androids have to look out for each other."

Jenny grinned, and popped a foot into the air.  "See you at lunch!"  In a split second, her pigtails rotated one-hundred eighty degrees and sprouted jet nozzles.  Hot blue exhaust shot out, and the teenage robot blasted down the hall and into her History class, leaving a few scraps of paper blowing in her wake.

Drew shook his head in amazement and laughed to himself.  "Oh yeah."  This was either the greatest, or the craziest, idea he'd ever had in his life.  It was sure going to be different.  "Ohhhhh yeah, we androids do have to look out for each other."

* * *

It wasn't just scraps of paper flying around in the hallway after Jenny sped off to class.  A small metallic wasp spiraled through the air, fighting to remain in control.  Its tiny motors and servos whirred furiously, and barely got it to a resting spot on top of the hallway clock.  The robot wasp shook off its disorientation and looked down the hallway at Jenny receding into the distance.  Tiny lenses in its eyes hummed and zoomed, like little television cameras.  Because they _were_ little television cameras.  Twenty thousand miles straight up, two sets of eyes were watching pictures _from_ those little television cameras.

Coasting between the Earth and the Moon, in the middle of a cloud of dust and rock that _looked_ an awful lot like a comet, in a large metal sphere about the size of a bus, two robots were fighting over the remote.

"You idiot!  XJ-9 was right there, standing perfectly still!  What were you _waiting_ for?!?!"  The robot on the left was a large, hulking brute, and bore an uncanny resemblance to a giant insect.  He waved his two large upper arms around the cockpit; with his two lower arms, he balled his fists in frustration.  He glared at his partner with eyes mounted on the sides of a large oval-shaped head.

His partner was far smaller, maybe no more than four feet tall.  Half of that seemed to be his giant metal head, which bristled with blinking lights and short antennas.  "Do you think you can do any better?" he protested in a mopey voice.  After all, he had designed the robot wasp.

"As a matter of fact, yes," growled the big fellow.

"Fine then.  Here's the controller."  The little guy started to hand over a complex-looking device that seemed to have about twenty joysticks coming out of it.  "Oh!  Oh!  Wait a minute.  The controller is designed for somebody with six arms.  Let's see."  He pointed sarcastically to each of the big fellow's giant claws.  "One.  Two.  And the other two couldn't work a pocket calculator."  Then he waved his six intricate mechanical arms in the air.  "Six!  I win."

"You know, I really ought to pound the chips out of you."

Little Guy held up his three right arms in a gesture of truce.  "Hold on.  Okay.  We have been cramped up in this ship for hours.  Now is not the time to lose our cool.  We have to wait for XJ-9 to deploy one of her devices.  When she does, we will be able to fly the wasp inside her body and gain access to her internal subsystems."

"Then she will belong to the Cluster," cackled Big Fellow in a booming voice.

"Yes, yes, and then you can make with the crush, kill, destroy, yada, yada, yada.  Whatever."

Big Fellow grumbled and backed off.  "You do make a good point.  All right.  We know she is going outside to participate in a – _human_ – recreational activity."  He practically spat out the word _human_.  "We will strike then.  Agreed."

"Agreed," nodded Little Guy.  He reached to his left, pushed a button, and a small panel slid open.  He took out two bottles of green liquid.  "Anti-freeze?"

"Oooh!  Don't mind if I do."  Big Fellow leaned back in his chair, crossed his legs, and cracked a cold one.

* * *

Continued in Chapter Two

* * *


	2. There's a Bug Going Around

* * *

Android Scam

A "My Life as a Teenage Robot" Fanfic

Chapter Two – There's a Bug Going Around

* * *

It was a beautiful day to be outside, even if only for an hour. A group of twenty kids was on the school ball field playing a little pick-up during lunchtime. Well, nineteen kids and one very happy teenage robot. Well, actually, eighteen kids, one happy teenage robot, and one nervous phony android.

"What is _she_ doing here?!?" protested the pitcher, as Jenny walked towards home plate.

_Saving my butt, that's what she's doing here._ "What's the matter Miguel?" Drew shouted from behind the bench. "Afraid to pitch to a girl?"

"_Caramba!_ I'll strike you out, rust bucket!"

A small group of onlookers gathered behind the backstop to watch the spectacle of a six-and-a-half-foot, super-powered robot girl taking practice swings. Jenny crouched down and adjusted her grip on the handle of the bat, like she'd seen in the _Complete Video Encyclopedia of Baseball_ that she'd downloaded just before lunch hour. "All right boys," she shouted, "show me the good stuff!"

"Oh, I'll show you the good stuff!" Miguel looked in towards the catcher, and they agreed on a sign. "Hokay, robot, here comes the fastball. You're not ever going to touch this pitch. You're not even going to see it!"

"We'll see!" Jenny tensed in her crouch. The pitcher went into a spectacular wind-up. In came the pitch. Jenny closed her eyes and swung with all her might. And missed completely. Her torso rotated in complete circles for a few seconds before she finally came to a stop. The wind from the swing gushed outwards, blowing the hats off of all the infielders.

Miguel's "slow ball" had landed ten feet in front of home plate. The catcher lobbed the ball back to him as he laughed. "So sorry! It must have slipped out of my hand!"

Jenny frowned, and tapped her bat against her feet. "Pretty tricky."

"That only works once, Miguel!" shouted Drew. "Jenny, keep your eyes on the ball!"

He wasn't really paying attention to her, though. He looked around the field, towards the school, slowly walking back and forth. His knee was bothering him a bit today; it had been giving him trouble the last few weeks. _I don't see them yet._ Drew looked a little concerned. _Well, maybe they won't show up today._ He snorted. _Like heck they won't show up. They always show up on Mondays. And they always pound me on Mondays. Monday is Pounding Day. Well, maybe not today,_ he thought, looking back towards Jenny.

"All right. Let's try that again." _Keep my eyes .. on the ball._ And Jenny had rather amazing eyes. She crouched down again and focused on Miguel as he went into his wind-up. The instant the ball left his hand, Jenny projected a laser grid onto the inside of her eyeballs. Trajectory and tracking data streamed into her vision, and she precisely calculated the exact spot and time that the ball would cross the plate –

Her bat exploded into sawdust on contact. Shock waves spread out and set off car alarms and broke windshields; the kids on the ball field were knocked flat on their backsides. The ball screamed into the air, invisible to the naked eye. A few seconds later, the turbulence from its flight could be seen disrupting clouds in the stratosphere.

The pitcher stared into the sky. "_Madre de dios!"_

"AWESOME!" screamed Jenny's teammates. Jenny was still standing at the plate, concerned that she'd just reduced one the school's bats to a smoldering ember. Then she realized they were cheering her. Even a few of the kids on the other team, climbing back to their feet, were cheering and whooping. _Cheering me!_ She trotted around the bases, drinking in as much of the moment as she could.

Drew walked back to the bench and sat down. The knee really was bothering him today. "Pretty good poke there, slugger," he said to Jenny as she came off the field. _Let's see if we can't put those robo-muscles to better use._

"This is _great!_" she gushed, and started dancing playfully. "Go Jen-ny! Go Jen-ny! It's my birth-day! It's my birth-day!" A few of the kids joined her in making "raise the roof" gestures and whooping it up.

As she laughed with her teammates, Drew noticed just how much Jenny was enjoying the attention from her fellow students. She was soaking it up like a sponge. He hadn't expected her to have this much fun. That wasn't why he had invited her. He began to realize, though, that Jenny probably wouldn't have cared if she was playing baseball or tiddly-winks. She ached to be around other teenagers and simply _belong._ It was actually kind of pathetic. Why try so hard to win the friendship of people who were just going to mock you and hurt you? And treat you like a freak? Didn't she realize that being so eager made her vulnerable? To being hurt by snobs like the Krust cousins? Or believing something as stupid as me being an –

"_Android!_"

Drew gritted his teeth. A rugby ball sailed from somewhere, and smacked him in the back of the head. _Here we go._

"Hey Android! I'm _talking_ to you_!_" Two hulking seniors swaggered towards the field, wearing matching striped rugby shirts in the school colors. Moose and Ox. Between them, they were almost six hundred pounds of solid muscle and bad haircuts. The mere sound of their voices sent a shudder through the other kids around the benches.

Drew had made a serious mistake a few months ago; as usual, his big mouth had gotten him into trouble. He'd been at Mezmer's, and made a creative, sarcastic comment about the intelligence of rugby players. Unfortunately, Moose and Ox had been sitting in the next booth. That was _not_ a pleasant memory – he'd wound up upside-down in a trash can behind the building. He hadn't been back to Mezmer's since – jocks hung out there all the time. To make matters worse, Moose and Ox had decided to make him their little "project". As a way of reminding all the little people just who was in charge in the high school universe.

The other kids on the bench slowly slid away from Drew. _Hey, thanks for the support, guys._ He couldn't get too upset; terror was the normal reaction to Moose and Ox. The game stopped as the players in the field watched the developing action, anticipating a very one-sided smackdown.

Ox picked up the rugby ball, stood directly behind Drew, and bounced it off the back of his head again. "I hear you've been shooting off your big mouth again, Android."

_Wow, that was fast. Brit and Tiff really are well connected. _Drew clenched his jaw. He didn't want to give them any satisfaction. Plus, "androids" didn't experience pain, right? _Need to keep up the act a bit longer to make this work_. He turned to face them. "Moose. Ox. How's it going, guys? Come to play a little baseball?"

"Actually, I feel more like playing a little 'face-ball'." Ox flexed his forearms and sent the ball rocketing towards Drew's nose.

But an arm – a pale-blue-striped robotic arm – shot out of nowhere and caught the ball six inches from Drew's face. The arm stretched twenty feet away, to an angry robot girl. Her eyes narrowed into slits. "Sorry, guys – ball game's over." Jenny squeezed her hand, and popped the rugby ball like a balloon.

Ox and Moose turned and growled at Jenny. "This is none of your business, dork-bot," said Ox.

"I'm making it my business. What have you got against androids? "

_Yes!_ Drew mentally high-fived himself.

Moose grabbed Jenny's extended arm. "Hey! Ox told you to buzz off -"

The arm yanked itself free, made a fist, and slammed into Moose's stomach. Moose nearly folded in half as the air was driven from his lungs. Jenny picked up Moose by the scruff of his shirt and started swinging him in circles ten feet over her head. Moose turned into a blur as Jenny spun him faster and faster.

Ox grabbed a sack of baseballs and started hurling them at Jenny. The first one _clanged_ off of her chest, but that just made her angrier. From her left elbow, she extended a stack of metal segments that unfolded into a shield. While deflecting the rest of the baseballs, she threw the now-airsick Moose directly at Ox. Ox didn't even have time to react as his massive friend plowed into him and hurled them both backwards about thirty feet into the dirt. Moose and Ox lay motionless for a few seconds, groaning in misery.

Jenny huffed and planted her fists on her hips. "We're just trying to have some fun. What is _wrong_ with you meatheads?!?"

"Moose, Ox, you haven't been formally introduced," grinned Drew. "Moose, Ox, this is Jenny. Good friend of mine. Jenny, Moose and Ox." _Payback sucks, eh boys?_ He flashed Jenny a thumbs-up. Jenny grinned and returned her own emphatic thumbs-up. _Oh, brother,_ he thought.

The kids on the field and the benches started cheering for Jenny again. Everybody had been tormented or intimidated by Moose and Ox at one time or another, and nobody was sad to see them on the receiving end of a beating.

Drew couldn't help but feel a little satisfaction in a plan well executed. He'd come to school that day fully expecting to get his regular Monday lunchtime beat-down. But when he'd met the robot girl in the hallway earlier, and she'd believed that he was actually an android – _Yeesh! What a dufus!_ – he'd smelled a sucker ripe for the picking. He wasn't interested in winning her friendship. He was interested in recruiting her fists. And it had all worked better than he could have hoped for. With a little luck, Moose and Ox would steer clear of him from now on. Heck, they should have no trouble finding another "project", Drew figured. Just so long as it wasn't him.

Miguel was eager to get the ball game back on. "All right, all right. Show's over. Switch up!"

Drew rubbed the back of his head, and grabbed his hat and glove. Jenny simply extended and unfolded her left hand until it was the size of a baseball glove. Her pigtails rotated forward, flattened horizontally, and spread out to form a makeshift sun visor. "What position should I play?" she asked eagerly.

"Hmmm?" mumbled Drew. "Wherever. Right field." He gestured vaguely in that direction. As far as he was concerned, the robot girl had served her purpose.

* * *

The robot wasp made its way though the trees outside the high school, towards the ball park. Dozens of human males and females were mingling about and engaging in recreational activity. None of them were of any interest, however. The wasp was searching for one very special student. It circled around in a seemingly random pattern, eventually making its way towards the dirt infield, where a greater concentration of students were moving about. Then the wasp's sensors picked up its primary target. It settled on top of the backstop, behind home plate, and trained its cameras on a six-and-a-half foot tall teenage robot girl.

* * *

Moose and Ox staggered back to their feet; Moose cradling his stomach, Ox holding his head. Ox glared back towards the ball field with a mixture of hate and bruised pride. He reached down and grabbed one of the baseballs that had been lying on the ground beside them. Ox fired the ball at Drew's back.

"Don't forget your ball, Android!"

The baseball caught Drew in the back of his right knee while he jogged out to first base. He spun to the ground awkwardly and –

SNAP!

Moose and Ox cackled, and moaned, and staggered off back towards the school building.

Drew reached down and felt around his knee. _I hope that wasn't what I thought it was._ He got back to his feet and tested his right leg.

"Oh, crap." _Not here. Not now._

"You all right, Drew?" called Jenny from the outfield, concerned for her new "friend".

"Not really," he mumbled, with disgust in his voice. "Somebody take first base!"

Drew gingerly hopped on his left leg back to his team's bench. He rummaged through his backpack for a small black case, and set it on the bench beside him. Most of the others kids paid no attention, and the game continued. Jenny, however, came in from the outfield and sat down next to him with a soft _clank_.

Drew sighed, and felt around his jeans, just above his right knee.

_Snap. Twist. Pop._ Drew twisted his right leg a quarter-turn, and slid it gently out of his pant leg.

* * *

"OK! There she is!" Big Fellow pointed at the monitors on the wall of the Cluster ship. "She appears to be assisting that damaged sports droid. We need to get closer."

"Why are you whispering?" sneered Little Guy.

"Because I don't want them to hear us – " He slapped his metal claw to his head. "Just get closer."

Little Guy grabbed his remote control with his six arms, and began working controls with his twenty-four fingers. Twenty thousand miles below, the robot wasp leapt into the air and drifted down towards its target.

* * *

Between the two ball teams, and a group of sophomores hanging out with a boom-box behind the backstop, there were around thirty students on the ball field. Most of them were staring and gesturing towards the right-field bench, empty except for Jenny, and Drew, whose held his detached right leg in his hands.

A small smile spread on Jenny's face. She'd wondered a bit about Drew's claim of being an android. He didn't seem like one, even though everybody called him one. Well, she was staring at the proof right now. She was _not_ the only robot at school!

"What's the problem?" she asked helpfully, eager to help out a fellow "robot" in distress. "Simple malfunction? Or equipment failure? What do your diagnostics say?"

Drew laid his leg on his lap, and turned it over, inspecting it. "The 'diagnostic'," he growled, "says that this miserable thing is a piece of junk." He really, _really_ hated taking this thing off in public.

A few kids were still staring at Drew and his detached leg, even while the game continued. To Drew, every pair of eyes felt like a pair of floodlights.

"Hey, Drew," Miguel yelled from the on-deck circle, "maybe you can install some talent in that thing while you're at it!"

"Forget the leg," another boy yelled, "take your head off and get it fixed!"

A dozen kids broke into laughter, making Jenny furious. Drew just kept his head down, brooding, and focusing on the knee joint.

"Is there anything I can do?" asked Jenny.

"No, there isn't," hissed Drew.

He popped a protective cover off of the knee joint. "Something's loose in there - man, when's the last time I cleaned this?" He rapped the mechanical leg against the wooden bench, and dust and gravel fell out onto the ground. _Just like me in geometry class this morning_, thought Jenny, smiling broadly. Drew didn't notice her reaction. He opened his small black case and pulled out a screwdriver, then started feeling around inside the leg's knee joint.

"Hang on a second, Drew," said Jenny. "I might be able to help. Let me check my roadside assistance kit." She raised her arms, and a series of small trays snapped out of her torso, containing nuts, bolts, and assorted spare parts. The fingertips on her right hand popped open to reveal wrenches and screwdrivers. "I've got standard, metric, Phillips, star head, slot head …"

Drew snapped upright. "Will you just BACK OFF?!?!" he shouted.

* * *

"There! There!" Big Fellow pointed at the monitors on the wall of the Cluster ship. "We can directly access her central core! This is perfect. XJ-9 is stationary and distracted."

"I can see, thank you very much," sneered Little Guy. "I _do_ have six eyes."

"Well hurry it up then! "

The robot wasp landed delicately on the end of the long, wooden bench and started crawling towards XJ-9.

* * *

Jenny was shocked, and a little hurt. "What's wrong?!?!"

"What's _wrong?_" snarled Drew. "My tinker toy leg is lying on my lap, is what's wrong."

Jenny couldn't understand why Drew was so mad. The leg didn't look to be seriously damaged. Androids had to perform self repair all the time, right? In the run of a week, Jenny, or her Mom, had to perform lots of little repairs. Battles, disasters, and explosions took their toll on a girl after a while.

"There doesn't seem to be any structural damage," said Jenny. "I'm sure we can fix it."

"Arghhh!" Drew growled. "I can do this myself! Get back in the outfield."

Jenny finally grew tired of the attitude. "Drew, I don't _understand_. What is your problem?"

Drew gritted his teeth. Angry, bitter, and self-conscious, he hit his boiling point. He turned and shouted at Jenny's face. "Problem?!? How stupid are you?!? My _problem_ is that I just wanted to mellow out and play some stinkin' pick-up baseball. I just wanted one lousy hour to enjoy being outside without getting harassed. I just wanted to go _one hour_ without hearing the name 'Android'. But that was just too much to ask for, wasn't it?!?! Instead I'm a carnival sideshow. Everyone come have a look! That's my _problem._ I'm a metallic freak job. Can you _understand_ that? No! Of course not! How can you _possibly_ understand what that's –"

He stopped in mid-rant.

Jenny's shoulders slumped; she shrunk back, with a pained expression on her face. Her blue pigtails drooped slightly, with a soft whir.

Drew's face went pale.

_Oh – my – gosh._

_Of course she understands._

"I – I'm sorry." Drew barely heard himself speak. "I – I didn't think –"

He didn't have enough air in his throat to finish the sentence.

Drew fidgeted with his mechanical leg, not aware of what his fingers were doing. His head was spinning at the idiocy of what he'd just said. _Of all the students in this school, she's the only other one who would understand what it feels like to be completely different from everybody else._ As if that wasn't enough, another thought occurred to him. _At least when my leg is on and hidden, I blend in with the normal students. She'll never have that luxury._

"Forget about it," smiled Jenny. "I sort of remember giving this speech earlier today."

Drew gulped hard. He felt about three inches high.

"Uh – umm, J-Jenny? I – uh – I could use a little light, right here." He gestured weakly to the exposed knee joint of his leg.

"No problem." The screwdriver retracted from her index finger, and was replaced by a thin bright flashlight. They cleared a space between them to work on the repair. And they started to talk.

* * *

The robot wasp clung sideways to the edge of the bench, hiding out of sight, then continued crawling towards XJ-9 and her companion. They seemed preoccupied with the repair of some sort of mechanical appendage.

"Hmmm. It appears that XJ-9 has found at least one other robot to associate with on this primitive planet." Big Fellow studied the pictures coming back from the robot wasp's eyes. "Not much of a robot, really. Looks just like a human. Tall, thin, yellow cranial fur. Butt-ugly. A robot that is as weak and ugly as a human. I mean, what's the point?"

Little guy was concentrating completely on his remote control. "Never mind that one. You're the commander. Make with the commanding already!"

The robot wasp crawled underneath the bench, upside-down, and came up between XJ-9 and the broken android. A maze of screw and bolts littered the surface of the bench, and neither of the figures looming in the wasp's vision noticed its presence. The steel-gray and pale-blue robot girl had several trays extended from either side of her torso chassis.

"Wait for it …" Big Fellow scratched his chin. "Now!"

The wasp leapt into the air and dropped down into the lowest of XJ-9's retractable trays, landing among scattered spare parts and screws.

"Done and done," announced Little Guy. He set down his controller and wiped his six hands against each other. "The wasp now goes into automatic mode. When its environment is secure, it will release the nano-probes."

"Victory for the Cluster!" shouted the Big Fellow, punching the air with his mammoth upper arms. "Now the fun begins! Quake with fear, puny humans! Tremble before your Cluster masters!"

Little Guy scratched the top of his giant head. "What are you talking about?"

"Uh – you know. Crush! Kill. Destroy?"

"Whoa, hold on to your hard drive, there, Mister crush-kill-destroy. It takes a little time for the nano-probes to multiply."

Big Fellow blinked a few times and tapped his metallic thorax with a massive claw. "Uh – multiply what?"

Little Guy hopped out of his chair and onto his single wheeled leg. He rolled over and stood in front of the large red insectoid, who towered five feet taller. Scowling, he planted his six arms on the side of his chassis. "You didn't read the memo, did you?"

Big Fellow crossed his arms. "I am a Cluster Warrior Commander! I do not have time to read everything that crosses my desk." He frowned. "And I get a lot of spam."

"All right," sighed Little Guy. "Once XJ-9 retracts her equipment bays, the wasp will secure itself to her internal framework and analyze her subsystems. Tonight, when she enters sleep mode, the wasp will release the nano-probes."

He pressed a button on a wall screen, which showed a diagram of the nano-probe, a bizarre little structure that looked more like a piece of modern sculpture than a machine. It was the cutting edge of Cluster technology. "Ah, my precious little nano-probes. It's so cute, oh, it's a cutie!"

Big Fellow wasn't impressed. "Well, what is that tiny little thing supposed to do? It's smaller than a grain of dust."

"Much smaller," continued Little Guy. "One little nano-probe can do a little. One billion can do a lot. Tonight, the nano-probes will spread into XJ-9's internal systems and use them as _raw materials_. They will make _trillions and trillions_ of copies of themselves. They have artificial intelligence to adapt to their surroundings. When the nano-probes have fully integrated themselves into her, we shall activate the remote control in the wasp. And then ..."

Big Fellow smiled. "Crush! Kill! Destroy! … And, maybe enslave the human race."

* * *

Drew had finally found the problem with his leg. "Nuts. One of the main screws actually broke off and it got jammed right – there. These are expensive, too." He dug at it with a small tool. "So he actually made you take off your arm in front of the whole class? Snitzenburg is such a jerk!"

"Well, he probably wasn't _trying_ to humiliate me," said Jenny, rubbing her right shoulder. "But like I need another reason for people to freak at me! I mean, I get so _tired_ of that!"

"Tell me about it. Last Christmas, we flew to Tampa to visit my grandmother." Drew got into the story, gesturing with his hands. "I set off the metal detector. Three times. They made me take off the leg and send it through the X-ray machine. Half the airport was staring at me."

"Remember that cruise ship from three weeks ago?" asked Jenny. Drew nodded. "I was cleaning salt water out of my insides for three days. _Ackkk._ I had to get all new electroplating."

"Ouch. I haven't been to the beach in years. Salt water … and sand." Drew shook his head. "Oh, oh, - this one time, some clown in Physics class stuck a big horseshoe magnet on the back of my leg."

Jenny rolled her eyes. "Don't get me started on magnets."

They shared a laugh, over something that only they could understand.

Something strange was happening. An hour ago, Drew had thought of Jenny as a naïve fool who had fallen victim to his ingenious con. But as they talked, Drew was amazed by how much he and Jenny had in common, how many of Jenny's problems were familiar to him. The treatment by the rest of the kids. The annoying little things they had to put up with every day. And the crushing lonely feeling that there was nobody else in the school who could possibly understand what it was like to be them. Drew's conscience felt like a knife stuck in his gut. And his guilt was giving that knife a twist.

With a sharp crack, Drew worked the broken screw free, and it fell off onto the bench in two pieces. "Well, there's the problem."

"So do you have any spares?" asked Jenny.

Drew quickly checked his tool case. "Nope. Well, the leg works fine with one screw missing; it just means I have to take it easy and sit out the rest of the game."

"Well, I must have one of these somewhere ..." Jenny examined the broken screw. She couldn't find a spare, but knew she'd seen it before … "oh, that's right! " Her left leg cracked open, and a bunch of metal tubes and panels unfolded into a fantastic-looking, five-foot long cannon. She removed a single screw from the barrel with a power drill in her pinkie finger. The cannon immediately collapsed back into its compact form, and her leg returned to normal. She held it out to Drew. "This should work. Try it!"

Drew was a little stunned. "Um, don't you, like – _need_ that?!?"

"I think I can make it through English and Chemistry with only one plasma cannon," she grinned. "I'll just get a new one from my Mom at home tonight."

"Well … thanks, Jenny." He tried the new screw in his knee joint. "It's a perfect fit. Man, that's great! One last touch." Reaching into his backpack, he pulled out a small can of lubricant labeled "WZ-40". He sprayed his knee joint and flexed his leg to test it. "Hey, that's a lot better. Nice and smooth."

He noticed that Jenny was rubbing her right shoulder again. "Is that still bothering you from this morning?"

"Hmmm? Oh, it's nothing serious. It is a little irritating, though."

Drew gestured to the can of WZ-40 in his hand. "It's good for what ails you."

Jenny smiled and grabbed her right arm. A few whirs and clicks later, it disconnected and popped off into her lap. Drew sprayed her shoulder socket with the lubricant. She giggled. "Ooooooh. It's cold! Oh, that feels _good_." She snapped her arm back into place, and moved it around a bit. Nothing but the smooth sound of her servo motors. "Sweet!"

While she flexed her arm, Drew rolled up his pant leg and re-attached his leg. He had to work it a bit, but it eventually locked into place. Drew cautiously stood up and took a few practice steps. "Good as new," he said. He lightly bounced up and down, testing the shock absorbers. "Better than new."

Drew looked back up at Jenny. "Jenny, thanks – thanks a lot. I mean it."

"Hey," she beamed cheerfully, "we androids have to look out for each other, right?"

"Heh … yeah … yeah, right." _Ugh._ He felt like he'd been punched in the stomach.

"C'mon, let's get back in the game," said Jenny. There were assorted screws and bolts lying on the wooden bench. Drew helped Jenny collect them and put them back into Jenny's various retractable trays.

Drew slapped his forehead. "Oh, wow, I am so stupid." The hard plastic cover for his knee joint was sitting upside-down in one of Jenny's parts trays. Inside the cover, out of sight, sat a small metal object.

A robotic wasp.

Drew grabbed the plastic cover, reached up his pant leg, and popped it into place on his knee joint. "Man, I'd have felt silly if I forgot that."

* * *

Continued in Chapter Three

* * *


	3. Fool Me Twice, Shame On Me

* * *

Android Scam

A "My Life as a Teenage Robot" Fanfic

Chapter Three – Fool Me Twice, Shame on Me

* * *

 "I ah-reckon there ain't enough room in this yard for the both of us."

The little fellow ambled off of the front porch, wearing a bandana, L'il Cowpoke cow-spotted chaps, and a white ten-gallon hat that nearly doubled his height.  A shiny tin badge was pinned to his shirt.  He strutted slowly, bowlegged-style, to face off with his adversary on the front lawn – his older brother.  "Ah'm a-callin' you out, Black Brad."

"That so, now, Sheriff Tuck?"  Brad grinned wickedly.  "Well, Ah aims to please."

Tuck squinted his face into an intimidating stare.  "Ah'm a-gonna fill yer belly full of styrofoam."  His hand hovered over a bright-orange Nurf pistol hanging from his belt.

Brad moved his hand towards a similar bright-green gun on the belt of his pants.  "Say yer prayers, little varmint."

Tuck squinted even harder, till he could barely see through his eyelids.  "Do ya feel lucky, punk?"

Brad sighed in frustration.  "Tu-uck!  You're mixing genres.  And do I have to wear this stupid hat?"  He took a black cowboy hat off his head and ruffled his spiky red hair.

"Brad, you promised!" protested Sheriff Tuck.

"But I gotta go to the mall later.  It's giving me hat head."

"A-hem."  Tuck tapped his chest.  "I believe I can persuade you to continue our little shootout with four carefully chosen words."

Brad folded his arms across his chest.  "I'm listening."

Tuck held out his hand and ticked off the words on his fingers.  "Magazine – under – your – mattress."

Brad's eyes grew wide as saucers.  He slammed the black cowboy hat on his head with a scowl.  "Yer a-gonna pay fer that, Sheriff."  He grabbed his Nurf gun and got off a shot that suction-cupped directly onto the center of Tuck's giant hat, knocking it off his head to the ground.

"Ahhh!" screamed Tuck.  "Big Zeke!"

"You named your hat?!?" asked Brad.

"Well I don't have a deputy," Tuck whined.  "Don't worry, Zeke, ah'm a-gonna avenge you!!!  Yeeee-haaaawww!!!"

The two brothers ran madly around their suburban house, diving behind hedges and lawn furniture for cover while firing suction-cup darts at each other.  Brad had the upper hand, and was getting a kick out of seeing his little brother try to run while wearing those ridiculous chaps.  But Brad had a plan.  He started collecting darts as Tuck shot and missed, without firing back himself.  Soon Tuck was out of ammo, and Brad had all the darts.

A few moments later, Sheriff Tuck peeked around the corner of the house, nerves on edge.  The bad guys were a-gunnin' for him, and he was out of bullets.  He scanned the front yard for Black Brad.  No sign of him behind the planter.  He twern't behind the lawn gnomes neither.  But the Sheriff did see a big pile of suction-cup darts sitting on the lawn, just beside the hedges separating their yard from the neighbor's yard.

"Smells like-a ambush," mumbled Tuck.  But he needed ammo.  He moseyed over towards the dart pile.

He glanced around, seeing nobody.  "Sure is quiet 'round these parts," he said nervously.  He reached down a for a dart –

Black Brad popped up from the neighbor's side of the hedges.  "Prepare to meet yer maker, Sheriff!"

"Aaaaah!!!" Tuck screamed.  He grabbed two darts and jumped with all the might in his little legs, leaping _through_ the hedges towards Brad, while feeding the gun and pumping furiously.  He rolled a few times and landed on his bottom, disoriented – but he could make out a figure looking down at him.  _Pop!  Pop!_  He got off two shots.

"Ha!  That'll learn ya to mess with the likes of Sheriff – " Tuck looked up and gulped.  "- Uh, oh."

A disheveled middle-aged woman with wild white hair frowned down at Tuck.  She wore a long yellow overcoat and had a clipboard tucked under her arm.  And she wore a large pair of black-rimmed glasses with very thick lenses – each one of which was covered by a suction-cup dart.

"Heh, heh," chuckled Tuck, weakly.  "Hi there, Mrs. Wakeman."

A few seconds of stony silence passed before the lady reached up and plucked the darts off of her glasses.

"Hello, Tucker.  Bradley."  Her voice could have frozen water.

"Hey there, Mrs. Wakeman."  Brad rushed over to defend his little brother.  "Ahh … heh-heh … sorry about that little mishap.  Boys will be boys, y'know."

"Yes, boys will be boys – " she planted her hands on her hips, crossly – "and robots will be robots.  Have either of you seen XJ-9?  She has not returned home from school yet.  She is late, _as usual_.  I have very urgent tasks for her to perform."

"What kind of tasks?" asked Brad, happy to change the subject.  "Fighting monsters and sewer mutants?"  He swung his fists in the air, dramatically.

"Sewer mutants, _indeed_."  Mrs. Wakeman shook her finger in Brad's direction.  "XJ-9 must help me monitor for near-space Cluster activity."

Brad eased his hands into his pockets.  "Cluster activity, huh?  Yeah, we tangled with the Cluster a little while ago.  Showed 'em who was boss."

"I was the head," said Tuck, trying to sound important.

"Really," said Mrs. Wakeman, less than impressed.  "Somehow I'm not sure I'll sleep well tonight knowing that you two are the Earth's last line of defense against a horde of robot invaders."  She tossed the two Nurf darts back at Tuck.  One landed on his nose, and the other stuck to the middle of his forehead.

Tuck struggled to pull the dart from his forehead, then stopped, and looked up with a wide-eyed grin.  "Here she comes."

A few hundred feet over their heads, Global Robotic Response Unit XJ-9, better known to her friends by her chosen name Jenny, pivoted her body in the air with the grace of a gymnast, switching from high-speed flight to smoothly drop towards the ground on twin flames from her pigtail-jets.  _What a fantastic day, _she thought. _ I can't wait to log it all in my computer diary._  She touched down light as a feather, between her mother and two friends, rotated her pale blue pigtails to normal, and clasped her hands behind her back.

"Sorry I'm late," she blurted, a little excited.  "Hey Tuck.  Hey Brad!"  She chuckled, "Nice hat."

Brad grimaced, took off the cowboy hat, and tossed it over the hedges.  "Hey, Jen.  Where ya been all day?  I didn't see you at lunch."

"I was outside on the ball field," she started to answer.  "After school too.  You'll never guess who –"

Mrs. Wakeman held out her clipboard, frantically pointing to a group of complicated equations.  "XJ-9, there is no time for mindless jabbering.  Where have you been!?!  I have been working all day on those readings from this morning's reconnaissance.  Now, I don't have anything conclusive, but with additional data, I have the utmost confidence that it will only take a few hours to …"

Jenny cut her off, looking annoyed.  "Hello to you too, Mom.  'Why, welcome home, Jenny.  How was your day, Jenny!'"

"We don't have time for verbal thrust-and-parry, XJ-9.  We could be on the cusp of a grave crisis!"

"Mom, you think everything's a crisis.  Look!  It's a beautiful, peaceful day!"  _Not even Mom is going to spoil my good mood today._

Brad smiled.  "Wow, you're sure feeling a lot better."

"Brad, today was the _greatest._  I've got to tell you guys all about it."  She was aching to tell _somebody_. 

Mrs. Wakeman waved her arms impatiently.  "Hel-l-lo!  Still talking here!  Global catastrophe and what not!"

"_What_ global catastrophe?" huffed Jenny.  "All the monitors are quiet.  My remote didn't go off once today."

Tuck sprung to his feet, and menacingly raised his hands above his head.  He took a few lumbering steps like an old B-movie monster.  "It's the _Cluster_!!!"

"The _Cluster?"  _That did get Jenny's attention.  _Can't those creeps take NO for an answer?_  The Cluster wanted to turn the universe into a paradise for robots, but their version of paradise would have every human being on Earth in chains.  _And if Cluster Prime is supposed to be such a great place, they sure have to drag a lot of robots there kicking and screaming._  From the first time she met a Cluster drone, Jenny suspected that, under Cluster rule, she'd be as much a mindless slave as her human friends would be.

"Oh, no - are there Cluster robots attacking somewhere?  Have they launched an assault fleet against the Earth?  Is the Queen …"  She folded her arms across her chest.  "Wait a minute.  Is this _still_ about that _stupid_ space trip you made me go on before school today?"  _Wow, I'd already forgotten about that.  Of course, I _wanted_ to forget about that.  Leave it to Mom._

"I'd rather go to space than school _any_ day," said Tuck, a little awestruck.

Brad shrugged his shoulders.  "That's what I keep saying!"

"If I may continue!!!" shouted Mrs. Wakeman, struggling for control.  Her raised voice got everybody's attention.  "Young Tucker is correct.  Analysis from this morning's reconnaissance definitely reveals Cluster radio transmissions emanating from the vicinity of near-Earth space!"

"Radio transmissions?  That's _it_?"  Jenny rolled her eyes.  "Geez, Mom".

"Oh, XJ-9, I do wish you would take your responsibilities more seriously.  Where there's smoke, there's fire, and where there are radio transmissions, there is bound to be a Cluster spacecraft."  Mrs. Wakeman's voice took on a more dire tone.  "And I'm afraid that's not the worst of it.  I cannot pinpoint the source of the signals, but I can tell that they were being directed towards this set of co-ordinates."  She tapped her clipboard, and circled a jumble of numbers.

"And that means _what_, exactly?"

"You _do_ have a GPS navigation system.  Humor your mother."

_Mom, for crying out loud._  A section of Jenny's chest slid open, and a swivel arm telescoped out, unfolding into a computer screen.  A map of the United States hummed into view, and quickly zoomed in to the co-ordinates her mother provided.

"Hey," Jenny said, "that's my high school."

"Dear, the Cluster has tried to assimilate you before, to use a tool for their evil schemes.  And there is no reason to believe they won't try it again."  Mrs. Wakeman's face grew sad.  "And if they ever succeeded, and took you away to their homeworld, I … I just don't know what I'd do."

Jenny felt her eyes get a little moist.  "Awww, Mom!"  She smiled sweetly, and put a hand on her mother's shoulder.  "Mom, don't be sad.  You don't have to worry about me."

"Yes, I do.  You're not insured, and it would take at least six months to build another robot."

Jenny groaned to herself. _ So much for the tender mother-daughter moment.  Well, I'll take what I can get._

Brad and Tuck were struggling to keep up with all the science lingo.  "So, all these radio waves beaming at our school are for what, exactly?" asked Brad.  "A Cluster radio station?"

"Most certainly not.  They are most likely some form of remote control signal."

"Well Jenny doesn't seem like she's being remote controlled," offered Tuck, "and she's the only robot in school."

_Oh, right!  I almost forgot!_

"No, I'm not!" said Jenny excitedly.

"What are you talking about?" Brad asked with a puzzled look.

_Finally!_  "I met another robot at school today, guys!  It was great!  We hung out together at lunch and played baseball.  And then we played another game with some other teenagers after school.  And I invited him to come with us to the music festival downtown this Saturday afternoon.  You don't mind, do you guys?"  She was practically bouncing with excitement.

Brad was still confused.  "Huh!  You'd think I would have noticed another robot ."

Tuck chuckled, clasped his hands together over his heart, and batted his eyes.  "Ooo-o-o-ooh!  Robot love!" He made kissing noises, then stuck out his tongue.  "_Bleah_!"

"No, _stupid_!"  Jenny laughed and mussed Tuck's hair.  "But it was great just talking to him.  I helped him repair his knee, and he helped me repair my shoulder.  It's just nice to know that there's one other person at school who knows what it feels like to be made of metal."

Mrs. Wakeman was annoyed that Jenny had strayed off topic – again – but her curiosity was piqued.  "Hmmmm.  It might be interesting to contrast their engineering schematics and construction techniques ..."

The three friends let Mrs. Wakeman drift off into thought.  "Sure, Jen it's cool," said Brad.  "How'd you meet him?"

"Well," explained Jenny, "remember that boy, Drew, we met in the hallway after first period this morning?"

Brad thought for a second, then nodded.  "Oh, right!  Android!  Heh-heh.  Funny guy."

"Wow!" Tuck interrupted.  "You met an android in school today?"

"No, no," chuckled Brad, "that's just his nickname."

"Nickname?" asked Jenny.  _What do you mean, nickname?_

Brad continued.  "His name's Andrew.  Get it?  Drew – Andrew – Android."

Tuck scratched his head.  "His nickname is 'Android'?"

"'Cause he's got an artificial leg." Brad explained to Jenny, "Remember when he said he missed a few months of school?  He was in a car accident.  Anyway, I was talking with a guy who knows him in History class.  Says he's always cracking jokes.  He sure had everyone laughing at the Krusts this morning."

Jenny's voice quivered a bit.  "So he's … only _part_ android?"

"Naw, he's not an android, he's just a guy with one leg.  The other one's metal, but it can't do all the cool freaky stuff yours can."

Jenny stared blankly towards the horizon.

"Always cracking jokes," she mumbled.

"Sorry about that _interruption_, Jen," said Brad, shooting a disapproving glance at his little brother.  "So tell us all about this other robot!"

Jenny blinked a few times.  Her cheeks started to turn red.

"Jen?"

"AAAAAAUUUUUUUUUGGGGHHHHHH!!!!!!"

The force of Jenny's scream knocked Brad and Tuck back into the hedge.  Mrs. Wakeman cringed behind her clipboard.  Jenny leapt fifteen feet into the air, and her hands expanded into a pair of giant fists.  She flung them towards the ground in blind fury, leaving a pair of four-foot wide craters in the driveway.  The seismic wave shook everything for five city blocks.  Tears streamed from her face as she fired her pigtail-jets and blasted through the third-floor window of her bedroom.  Broken glass tinkled down onto the lawn.

Brad got to his feet, brushed off his shirttails, and walked over to put a hand on Mrs. Wakeman's shoulder.  "I can see you want to be alone with your daughter, Mrs. W – we'll be next door."  Then he grabbed Tuck by the scruff of his collar, and they both sprinted off.

A few dull, pounding thuds sounded from the general direction of Jenny's bedroom.  Pieces of plaster and siding came off of the wall of the house, fluttering to the ground.

Mrs. Wakeman groaned to herself.  "De-encrypting intergalactic radio transmissions – child's play.  Teenagers – what was I thinking?"

* * *

It was the time of year when warm days were followed by crisp, cool nights.  Drew had the window cracked open to let some fresh air into his bedroom, but it wasn't helping.  He wrestled his way out from under a mess of sweat-stained sheets, and got to his feet – one flesh, one plastic and rubber.  He usually didn't sleep with the leg on.  But he'd been so exhausted by nine o'clock that he'd collapsed on the bed in shorts and a baseball jersey, and zonked out.  Now it was, what – two in the morning?  The clock said two-seventeen.  And he was approaching that so-tired-you-can't-sleep state.  _Ugh._

The first half of a rented movie had done nothing to help him forget about what he'd done to Jenny.  He still couldn't get over the fact that the first person he'd felt comfortable talking to at high school – heck, why not say it?  The first real _friend_ – was a _robot_.  Or at least, when he first met her, she was "the robot".  Now she was just _Jenny_.  If you closed your eyes and forgot about her appearance, it was just like talking another girl.  _No, that's not right._  It was like talking to a girl who _understood._  Well, except she didn't understand that Drew was a total liar.  _Double Ugh._

Drew staggered down the hall towards the bathroom.  He felt terrible.  He stooped over slightly, leaning his arm against the wall for support.  The stomach pains made sense – echh, Monday night was _tofu_ night.  His arms and legs felt like jelly, but he'd played a lot of baseball today.  It was the headache that was killing him.  _Maybe Dad has something in the medicine cabinet._  It felt like a blob of lava was worming its way around the inside of his head.  _Feels like the flu._  Of course, his conscience told him he deserved every second of it.  _I've come down with a case of Karma Flu._

Drew mixed up a couple of fizzing tablets in a glass of water and started drinking it, leaning against the sink.  He looked at his reflection in the mirror.

_Hey, fella, what did you do today?_

_Oh, met a girl who treated me with nothing but friendship, hung out with me after school, invited me to go with her friends to the festival this weekend – and I lied to her, used her, hurt her feelings, and … lied some more._

_Congratulations, you're a total scumbag!_

His moist blond hair hung down in his face, not quite blocking his bloodshot eyes.  He wiped a sweaty strand away from his forehead.  _How can I look so pale when I feel like I'm running a fever?_  His face was almost gray.  There was a digital thermometer in one of these drawers, somewhere.  He rummaged around and found it.  He finished the headache medicine, drank another glass of water, and stuffed the thermometer under his tongue.  Then he creaked back to his bedroom.

Drew sat on his bed, his back to the wall, and let the night breeze try to cool him off.  There was only one thing to do – come clean.  Jenny deserved that.  _And if she knocks my head off, well, I deserve that.  Yeesh.  She probably could actually knock – my – head – off._  No matter how he felt in the morning, he was going to school.  He needed to confess and apologize.

Making that decision seemed to lift a weight off his chest.  _Gotta get some sleep.  Might as well take the leg off this time._  He tried a few times, but the mechanism wouldn't release.  In fact, the metal and plastic felt weird – a little soft and sticky to the touch, like melting taffy.  _Ahh, figure it out in the morning._  He flopped over on his mattress and closed his eyes.  The burning sensation in his head had switched to a buzzing sensation, as if there were a swarm of bees vibrating their way through his bloodstream.  But now he felt it in his chest too, and up and down his arms and legs, into his hands and left foot.  He even felt it coming from his metallic leg.  Drew chortled into his soaked pillow.  _Feels like getting a massage from the inside.  Must be how the medicine works._  He had forgotten all about the thermometer, which dribbled out of his mouth and fell to the carpet.  It read one hundred and forty-six degrees.

* * *

A good eight hours of sleep mode had Jenny feeling a bit better, but she was still plenty angry at Drew for lying to her.  And as bad as the lying was, that wasn't the worst of it.  _For a few hours yesterday,_ she thought, _I was _not_ the only teenage robot at school.  I wasn't the only metal freak._  That feeling, _I am not alone,_ had felt fantastic.  Now she knew it had all been some stupid practical joke.  _Well, I hope he got a big fat laugh out of it._

It was already lunchtime, but Jenny didn't remember much of what happened to the morning.  Her heart wasn't in it today.  Other students streamed past her as she shuffled down the hall, staring at her feet.  _Whine-clank.  Whine-clank._

Brad emerged from the hallway crowd and fell in step with her.  "Hey there, Jen.  Heading for the cafeteria?"

"Sure," she sighed, "why not."

"Wow, you're still bummed out about the whole Android thing."

"Yeah, a little."

"Well, a tasty meal always helps me shake off the blues."  Brad opened the cafeteria door for her.  "Unfortunately, all we have today is … Shepherd's Pie and Eggplant Surprise.  Be grateful you don't eat.  Trust me," he grinned.

Jenny _harrumphed_ and walked in.  _Well, he's _trying _to cheer me up._

The cafeteria was almost filled to capacity, noisy with the clatter of pots in the kitchen and the chatter of students at the tables.  The jocks were at their table, talking about next Friday's football game.  The cheerleaders had their table next to the jocks.  Brit and Tiff were at the popular table, with their popular friends, looking very exclusive.  Even the nerds had a table, covered with action figures and twenty-sided dice.  _I don't suppose there's a robot table_, Jenny moped to herself.  The wait for the hot meals actually wasn't too bad right now.  Brad and Jenny grabbed trays and got in line.

Brad reached into his backpack, pulled out a large can labeled _Valvo-ween_, and started speaking in a bad French accent.  "If there _eez_ nothing to madame's liking, perhaps something from _zee_ private reserve?  A little Chateaux 10-W-30?  _Zee_ '57, she was an excellent year."

"Aww, Brad!  I was kind of thirsty."  She smiled for the first time that day.  "That's so sweet!"

"It should be, it's light sweet crude.  C'mon, Jen, I hate to see you so down.  Forget about that creep."

_At least I have one real friend._  "I'll be okay, Brad."

From behind a stainless steel counter, the hair-netted lunch lady motioned towards the line of students.  "C'mon, folks.  Move along and get yer vittles."

They eventually made they way along to the lunch lady.  Jenny set the motor oil on her tray.  "Nothing for me, thanks."

Brad scratched his chin.  "So many choices … I believe I'll try the Eggplant Surprise."

"All out," grunted the lunch lady.

"Okay then, Shepherd's Pie it is."

"All out, darlin'."

"Well, what's left then?" asked Brad.

The lunch lady slopped a greasy slab of grey … _something_ … onto a plate and shoved it towards him.  "Liver an' pig snout.  Government surplus."

Brad stared at the grease pooling around the meat, then looked at Jenny's motor oil.  He looked up at Jenny.  "Wanna swap?"

The students behind Jenny overheard the conversation, and moans of disgust filled the line.  "What happened to all the food?!?" somebody shouted.

"Don't blame me, sugar," answered the lunch lady.  "You shoulda got here before _that_ fella."

She pointed with a greasy ladle towards a table about thirty feet away.  Brad and Jenny looked over and saw three students staring in amazement at a blond guy surrounded by empty plates.  He was eating a fantastic amount of food, and was shoveling it into his mouth with two forks.  He was just now finishing off the last of the eggplant.  He sat back and clutched his stomach, as if in pain, looking almost exhausted from the effort.  It was Drew.

Jenny's eyes narrowed to angry slits.  She picked up her tray and walked towards Drew's table.

Brad tried to say something, but she was already halfway there.  He paid for his lunch and rushed over to the table.  He wanted to provide a little moral support.

Jenny stomped up to the table, directly in front of Drew, with a disgusted look on her face.

Drew was breathing heavily.  "So hungry …" he muttered to himself, then finally noticed somebody standing in front of him and – _oh, no._

"So, androids don't _eat, _ huh?"

"J-Jenny!" Drew blurted, and winced.  He shrunk down into his chair.  Jenny planted her fists on her hips with a loud _clank_ and glared at him.  She was _furious_.

"Jenny, I've got to tell you something," Drew managed to say.

"Save it, you big _liar_."

Drew gulped.  "Look, you're right.  I – I lied to you yesterday when I told you I was an android."

"_Really?  _Imagine that."

"And I'm _sorry._  It was a lousy thing for me to do …"

"It was a _really_ lousy thing to do, Drew.  Well, I suppose you're pretty proud of yourself.  I honestly did think that you were an android.  The 'broken screw' in your leg was a nice touch.  You sure made the robot look like a _big dope_."

"No!  That's not what I –"

Jenny kept going.  "And all that _talk_ about salt water and rusting and metal detectors.  Wow, you really had me going!  But I guess it was all just a big fat bunch of _lies_.  Well, it looks like the joke's on me, Drew.  Ha, ha.  Congratulations.  I hope it was _worth_ it."

Drew was reeling.  "Jenny, let me explain –"

"You really hurt my feelings, you big phony."

"But –"

Jenny stuck out her arm, turned her head and closed her eyes.  Her hand expanded and unfolded until it was three feet across.

"Talk to the hand, 'cause the robot's not listening," she said.

Drew sighed heavily, and started quietly collecting his dirty dishes and utensils, his hands shaking.  There had to be fifteen empty plates alone.  He built a pile on his tray and got up to leave the table.  By then, about a dozen students were closely watching the little drama unfold, buzzing with hushed whispers.  Jenny sat down with her motor oil and opened the can, still not looking at Drew.  Brad sat next to her with his lunch.

"It wasn't _all_ lies, Jenny," Drew said weakly, and shuffled away with his tray.

Jenny didn't answer, but simply took a small sip of her oil.  The table was silent for a few moments.

Brad finally spoke.  "Wow, Jen.  I was a little worried you were going to zap him with a laser or something.  But I think a laser might have been more humane."

Jenny shot him a nasty look.  "And just what's that supposed to mean?  Whose side are you on, anyway?"

Brad waved his hands defensively.  "I'm not on anyone's side!  No – I mean, your side!  I'm on your side!  I'm just saying, it seemed like he was trying to apologize."

Jenny's shoulders slumped.  _Great, now I'm snapping at Brad.  And Drew did say he was sorry … I thought I'd feel a lot better than this after telling him off._  She sighed.  "Let's just finish lunch and forget the whole thing."

And that seemed like the right thing to do, so Brad turned his attention back to his "meal", trying to decide if he was in a gambling mood.  But he found himself watching Drew slink away instead.  He couldn't get over how bad Drew looked – like he hadn't slept in a week.  His skin was a strange pale color.  And he moved slowly, gritting his teeth, as if every joint in his body was on fire.

He certainly didn't feel sorry for him – the guy had pranked his best friend, in a particularly cruel way.  But Drew sure wasn't enjoying his joke.  It didn't make a lot of sense.  Brad poked a piece of liver with his fork.  _He ate fifteen plates of this stuff?  Who's that hungry?_  He shook up a bottle of ketchup, and started pouring it on his liver as he watched Drew walk towards the conveyor belt that carried dirty dishes back to the kitchen.

Drew stopped short and set his tray down.  One of the dishes still had some eggplant on it, and he was still very – _very_ – hungry.  He'd never felt this hungry before in his life.  He scraped up the leftovers with a fork, ate it, and licked the fork.  Then he licked the fork again.

Then he swallowed it.

Brad froze.  _What the - ?_

It must have been good, because Drew swallowed his knife and spoon.  The he experimentally raised a dish to his face, licked it a couple of times, and –

_Crunch._

A pool of ketchup was building up on Brad's liver, as he stared at Drew in amazement.

A few more quick bites, and Drew had eaten a dinner plate.  Then a second.  And a third.  Then he stopped and clutched his hands to his head, as if struck by a painful headache.

Jenny finally noticed that Brad was now holding an empty bottle over a puddle of ketchup, staring off at something.  And by now, the tables in this corner of the cafeteria had noticed it too. She turned around to see what everybody was staring at.

Drew was grabbing spoons, forks, knives and plates off of the dirty cafeteria trays, and ramming them into his mouth like popcorn.

Brad finally snapped out of it.  "Umm – what's wrong with this picture?"

Jenny raised an eyebrow with a _whirr_.  _So what kind of a stunt is this?_

A student in a varsity jacket walked up to Drew and tapped him on the shoulder.  "Dude.  Dude!  You OK, man?"

Drew grabbed his head again, as if having a seizure.  Then he stopped, perfectly calm, and turned around.

The whites of his eyes were replaced with a soft, phosphorescent green.

"Remote link activated," Drew said in a voice that had dropped about two octaves.  "Performing systems check.  Welcome to Android OS 2000."

"Uh – dude?"

Drew kept speaking.  "To continue in English, press one.  Para continuar en Espanol …"

"Dude, you're messed up."

Back at their table, Brad shot a glance at Jenny.  "Okay.  This is different."

"This is _pathetic_," answered Jenny, rolling her eyes.  "Like _this_ is supposed to convince anybody he's an android?"

The varsity-jacket student slowly backed away from Drew, a little creeped out.  Drew stared at nothing in particular and kept talking out loud to himself.

"System Error Fifty-two.  Insufficient resources."

Drew walked, with a slow, methodical pace, back to the serving counter.  Moose and Ox, the massive seniors from the rugby team who had regularly tormented him, were getting their lunches.  He pushed a stunned Moose aside with one arm, cutting to the front of the line.  The lunch lady was refilling a steam tray with surplus pig snouts.  "You back for more?  Don't know where you're puttin' it, darlin'."  She started filling another plate.

"Hey, _Android,_ get your butt to the back of the line," growled Moose.

Drew lunged forward, and took a bite out of the stainless-steel countertop.

Gasps, and a few shouts, came from the students in line as Drew started ripping the steel countertop to shreds with his teeth.  The lunch lady ran for the kitchen.  Moose grabbed Drew by the shoulder and hauled him away from the counter.  "You asked for it, freak.  I am gonna enjoy this."  He hauled his arm back and threw a vicious blow to Drew's chin.

_Clang._

Moose danced around in pain, his knuckles turned to mush.  Ox, coming to his buddy's rescue, moved to grab Drew by the shoulders.  With an emotionless green-eyed stare, Drew shot out his arm and grabbed Ox by the collar.  Drew flung the senior straight up into the air, with amazing ease, driving him head-first into the overhead tiles, like a dart.  His legs dangled out from the hole in the ceiling.

"Whoa," said Brad.

Jenny closed her eyes and took another sip of oil.  "Faker."

Now the noise level in the cafeteria was rising, and the crowd was getting a little antsy.  Everybody was staring at the show by the serving counter.  A few students left their tables, sensing trouble was on the way.  Drew walked over to the first table and swung his arm over his head, bringing a first down into the middle of the fifteen-foot long section.  It smashed in half like a popsicle stick.  Drew pulled off one of the metal legs, as if pulling the drumstick off a turkey.  But he didn't bite it.

Drew held the table leg in his fist, and his hand … _ changed color._  Pale skin turned to a shiny, shimmering silver, and his hand seemed to lose form and … _flow_.  Thin silver tendrils snaked their way up and down the table leg, until the whole thing was a pulsating silver cylinder, laced with veins of green.  Then the silvery-green mass flowed back into Drew's hand, up into his arm, with a sound somewhere between a _whine_ and a _slurp._  Drew absorbed the other three table legs in similar fashion.  The solid metal seemed to melt into silvery ooze, and flow into Drew's body.

The piece of liver Brad was chewing on fell out of his open mouth.  "Uhhhh … Jen?"

Jenny wasn't paying attention.  "Just ignore him."

A few screams rang through the cafeteria, and students were starting to head for the exits.  Drew scanned the room and found what he was looking for.  He slowly, methodically, walked over to a large refrigeration unit that served sodas, milk and desserts.  It weighed well over a ton.  Drew slid it away from the wall, easily, with one hand.  He was looking for the wall socket.  The unit used a lot of electricity, and was plugged into a special outlet for heavy electrical loads.

Drew punched his arm through the wall, and grabbed the heavy gauge wire inside.  A searing bolt of electricity rushed out and screamed into Drew's body.  Tongues of electricity danced all around him, and his eyes glowed a brilliant green.  The lights in the cafeteria, and the entire school, went out, along with the rest of the power.  Drew was absorbing it all.  In fact, he was reaching outside the school and draining electricity from the city's power grid.  City blocks surrounding the high school started going dark.  Power transformers exploded like fireworks.

_Now_ the panic started, as flickering electrical arcs lit up the cafeteria with an otherworldly light.  Students screamed and pushed each other, stampeding out of the cafeteria.  Jenny and Brad were the only ones left sitting at their table, and Brad was starting to have second thoughts.  Jenny calmly worked on her nails with a rotary grinder.

Brad watched, spellbound, as Drew punched his arm into side of the big refrigerator, as if it were a cardboard box.  His arm transformed into a silver-green mass … _schlorrrrp … _and two dozen little silver fingers oozed out to envelop the metal panel.  An audible _hum-whine_ seemed to emanate from him as half the refrigerator turned to silvery molasses and flowed into his arm.

Brad tapped Jenny's shoulder.  "Uhhh … _Jen?!?_"

Jenny threw her arms up with a huff.  "Oh, for Pete's sake.  Knock it off, Drew.  It's not funny."  She got up and walked towards Drew, _clanking_ her feet in frustration.

Drew turned to face her, with an empty expression on his face.  "Startup sequence complete," he said in a monotone voice.  His head seemed to briefly shimmer like a gelatin mold.  With a slurping, bubbling sound, it turned into a shiny silver blob, running with angular patterns of faintly glowing green.  The shimmering-gelatin effect spread down his neck, split out to each arm and hand, continued through his chest and down both legs to his feet. 

A six-foot tall silver-green humanoid figure stood in front of Jenny now.  It was smooth and seamless, with a wedge-shaped head and glowing green orbs for eyes.  A few thin green lines ran along its surface, like printed circuits, though they seemed to ebb and flow as if they were floating in thick liquid.  The green eyes narrowed into angry slits and glowed menacingly.

Jenny tapped her chin.  "Okay, Drew, I'll admit, that's pretty impressive, but …"

Two silver arms shot out and coiled around Jenny's shoulders like tentacles.  Before she could react, the silvery-green figure lifted her into the air.  Twisting its body, it used its now fifteen-foot-long arms like a slingshot, and flung the robot girl towards the wall of the cafeteria.

Jenny plowed through the wall in an explosion of dust and plaster, shot out into the hallway, through two sets of lockers,  and through another wall, into the music room on the other side.  Stunned students dove for cover as her steel-and-blue form blasted into the classroom.  She ground to a halt, her metal body tearing up the wooden floor and sending instruments flying.  Jenny came to rest against a set of drums, covered in dust, wallboard, and a few shards of wood.

She wasn't hurt in the slightest.  But she was _stunned._

Brad sprinted into the room, a hint of panic in his eyes.  "Jenny!  Jenny, are you all right?"

She brushed a few pieces of debris off of her face.  "Yeah, sure … but … how?"

They looked back through the series of holes in classroom walls and mangled lockers, directly into the cafeteria.  Drew was absorbing the rest of the steel from the lunch counter into his mottled silver torso.  And he was growing visibly taller – he was at least eight feet tall, now.  His head panned from side to side, with a face devoid of any features save for those green eyes.

Brad knelt down and picked off a piece of wall that had stuck onto one of Jenny's pigtails.

"Ummm, Jen?  If he's faking it … he's doing a _really good job._"

* * *

Continued in Chapter Four

* * *


	4. Be Cruel To Your School

* * *

Android Scam

A "My Life as a Teenage Robot" Fanfic

Chapter Four – Be Cruel to Your School

* * *

Students ran in the hallways in every direction, some running away from the turmoil in the cafeteria, others eager to see what was going on.  Jenny quickly made her way through the chaos in the hall and stepped back into the cafeteria, which was now empty of all but about fifty people.  They were all staring towards the far wall of the room, where the cooking stoves sat in a row behind the serving counter.

Drew – who could now easily reach over the counter – had rammed his silvery left arm into the front of a huge cooking grill.  A wave of ooze washed over it, converting the hundreds of pounds of metal into a quivering, silver-green mass.  The former grill started to flow into Drew's arm, in seeming defiance of the laws of physics.  Fifteen seconds later, the last of it _slurped_ up, and a three-fingered hand re-formed.

Brad made his way in, just in time to see Drew absorb the last of a soft-serve ice cream machine.  Jenny had an annoyed look on her face.

"Brad, you told me that Drew wasn't an android!"

"Well he isn't!  Or, he wasn't!  I had it on good authority!" he said, shrugging his shoulders.

Jenny, now very unsure of what was going on, took a few steps towards Drew.  Not five minutes after she'd confronted him about his lies, about pretending to be an android, here he was – ten feet tall and made of metal.  _So he's an android after all?  Well … maybe I made him angry.  _She walked slowly towards him, her hands clasped behind her back.  Drew was literally devouring the kitchen sink.  She smiled, and tried to get his attention.

"Ahem - Drew?  Hey, Drew, look.  I may have said some things earlier that were a little … harsh."  Jenny gently rocked back and forth on her heels.

The silver-green, wedge-shaped head turned around at the sound of Jenny's voice.  A pair of green eyes narrowed into slits, and stared at Jenny, as if … analyzing her.  Drew finished absorbing the sink, and his long, snakelike arms shrank back to his sides.  He turned and slowly started to walk towards Jenny.

_Good,_ thought Jenny, _he's calming down._  "That's it, Drew.  We can talk this out."

The huge silver-green android took a few more cautious steps towards Jenny, with slow, fluid motions.  An electric hum filled the air, and a low synthesized rumble reverberated from its head.

_Wow, _thought Brad, _almost sounds like an animal growling._

A horrible possibility suddenly occurred to him.

"Jen?  Just a crazy thought here …" he shouted.  "I think he's trying to absorb all the metal in the cafeteria."

"Uh … yeah?"  _Well, that's pretty obvious.  _Jenny was trying to focus on keeping Drew calm.

"So what else is in the cafeteria right now that's made of metal?  Or should I say, _who_ else?"

_Gasp!_  Jenny cupped her hands over her mouth.

Drew slowly approached her, almost as if he were … stalking prey.  _No way – he wouldn't!!!_

Jenny took a few steps backwards.  "Heh-heh.  Okay, Drew, calm down.  Don't do anything crazy, now."

The android's arms started to shimmer a liquid silver-green.  Its hands re-formed into claws.  It knelt into a crouch, ready to pounce …

"Drew, I'm _warning_ you!"

The android swung a clawed arm towards Jenny like a scythe.  Jenny's pigtail-jets flamed to life, and she leapt into the air, easily avoiding the attack.  The silver-green claw rammed through two cafeteria tables, sending table fragments flying in every direction.  Jenny grabbed a ten-foot long chunk of tabletop out of mid-air.

"I'm sorry about this, Drew," she shouted, holding the wooden tabletop over her head, "but nobody's absorbing _me_!!!"  Jenny swung the massive board like a giant paddle, slamming it into the silver android's chest.  Drew flew backwards, blasting tables and chairs into the air.  His body crashed into the wall with an impact that shook the entire cafeteria, then bounced off and fell to the floor.  He shook his head, as if trying to regain his composure.

Jenny hovered in mid-air, fists at the ready.  "Maybe _that_ will knock some sense into you."

But "Drew" jumped back to his feet, shaking the floor with his bulk.  The ends of his arms briefly shimmered a liquid silver-green, and grew from three-fingered hands to heavy blunt cylinders.  The silver android crouched, and jumped fifteen feet up in the air towards Jenny, lunging its two new weapons at her like battering rams.  Jenny gracefully dodged left, then right, and grabbed one of Drew's arms as it missed her.

Gripping with both hands, she grit her teeth and used the android's own momentum to swing his body into the ceiling, embedding it with incredible force, knocking loose dozens of ceiling tiles and smashing pipes.  Still holding on to the android's arm, she felt a faint vibration in her hands.  The arm started to shimmer with a rippling silver-green.  _That's what happens just before it – absorbs something.  _Panicking, she heaved on it and hurled the android back into the cafeteria floor.  Its body lay crumpled at the center of a ten-foot-wide crater.

"_Gross gross gross gross gross!!!"  _Jenny backed away and shook her hands, rubbing them furiously.  There was no silver ooze on them, though – _whew._

A whining _schlorrrrrp_ came from the crater, and pair of silver-green legs flowed out, lifting the rest of the android's body to an upright position.  Rippling waves washed over the body and smoothed out the damage from Jenny's attack.  It stepped fluidly out of the crater with a low, guttural _growwwl_, looking as if Jenny had never laid a finger on it.

Brad stared, slack-jawed, from behind an overturned table, with a couple of other students.  "That would be _so cool … _if it wasn't trying to eat you."

"Brad, take those people and _get out of here!!!_" ordered Jenny.

"Shh-yeah, right!" answered Brad.  "Like I'm going to miss _this_.  And you might need my help."

Jenny didn't have time to argue with him.  Drew started to approach her again, his glowing green eyes tracking her movements as she hovered in mid-air.  Jenny started to grow concerned.  _Up to now, I haven't used any weapons.  I don't want to hurt him … but what if he doesn't give me a choice?_

She landed back on the floor, and held her arms open in a gesture of truce.  Maybe there was still a chance to reason with him.

"Drew, come on.  This is really getting crazy.  What's _wrong_?"

Drew crouched to jump again –

Suddenly a loud crack, like thunder, tossed both Jenny and the silver android onto their backs.

A bright, purple light burst into existence a few feet away from them.  Tables, chairs, and wastebaskets were knocked over, and a strong wind started to blow loose garbage and debris into a whirlwind.  Jenny shielded her eyes with her hands.

"For crying out loud_,"_ she shouted, "_NOW _what_?!?"_

The bright light expanded into a purple sphere, crackling with energy.  Two figures started materializing inside, one tall and huge, the other short and stocky.  A warbling, tinny sound resolved itself into two robotic voices … _arguing._

"You had one simple job to do, genius!  One job, and you couldn't even get that right!"

"Oh, that's nice.  Way to pass the buck, Mister Responsibility.  Oh, oh, wait, we're on."

The purple energy sphere dissipated, leaving two imposing robots standing in the middle of a scorched circle on the cafeteria floor.  One robot towered nine feet in the air, and had a crimson, four-armed insectoid body.  The other was much shorter – maybe four feet tall – and most of that was a massive head covered with antennae, blinking lights, and three pairs of eyes.  He had six arms, and stood on a single leg that ended in a pair of wheels.

The big fellow thrust out his massive upper arm, scowling at the students in the room.  His eyes glowed a menacing yellow.

"PATHETIC humans!!!  Surrender, and bow before your new MASTERS!!!  The robotic perfection that is … THE CLUSTER!!!"

Gasps of terror spread through the room.  Jenny got to her feet with a nasty look on her face.  _Cluster goons!  Arrgh, that's all I need!_

The robot continued.  "I am a representative of Queen Vexus, from Cluster Prime, sent to seize this planet in her glorious name!  My name is Cluster Warrior Commander Omicron Twelve!  And I'll be your dictator today.  That's Omicron, with a 'C', not a 'K'."

The little guy spoke up.  "Resistance is futile, meat creatures, for I am the most highly evolved robotic intelligence known to the galaxy!  My name is written in a quantum language that is beyond the abilities of your puny human brains to fathom!  Translating it would shatter the primitive ideas of what you call mathematics, and science, and reality itself!!! … but, everybody calls me Stanley."

Jenny leapt in front of the two Cluster robots, raised her arms, and deployed an impressive laser rifle out of each elbow.  She trained one on each of them.  "All right, you Cluster losers, listen up.  Nobody's seizing my school _or_ my planet.  Surrender now, and _maybe_ I'll go easy on you."

Omicron Twelve gestured towards Jenny.  "Why hello there, XJ-9.  Queen Vexus sends her fondest greetings to you."

Jenny's lasers _whined_ up to full power.  "I'd love to send _her_ 'my fondest greetings', but it looks like I'll have to settle for you two."

"Oh, it's not just 'us two'," chuckled "Stanley".

A pair of silver-green tentacles suddenly sailed at Jenny, and coiled themselves around her arms, pinning them to her sides.  Caught by surprise, she struggled against them as they grew tighter.

"Unghh …. Drew!  Drew, what do you think you're doing?!?!"

The huge silver-green android just tightened its grip, holding Jenny immobile against its chest, within the coils of its tentacle-arms.  Stanley wheeled forward, holding several complicated-looking pieces of equipment in four of his six arms.  He circled around Drew, apparently inspecting him, and studying his readings with great interest.

Omicron Twelve pulled a small yellow box from a compartment on his torso with one of his two smaller arms.  "What he is _doing_ is obeying his Cluster masters, as you soon shall be, XJ-9."

"Not likely!"  Jenny grimaced, still struggling against Drew's grip.  _Wait a second …_  "What do you mean 'he's obeying'?"

The huge crimson insectoid smiled, and opened the box for Jenny to see.  Inside was a small, yellow-and-black robot wasp.

"Yesterday, your little android friend here was infested with a colony of Cluster nano-probes, deployed from a robotic wasp, exactly like this one.  Nano-probes that were _meant_ to be for you, I might add," growled Omicron.

Stanley rolled his eyes, and shrugged his six arms.  "Okay, okay, so sue me.  Let's get on with it."

"They integrated with his circuitry," continued Omicron, "giving us _complete remote control_ over his computer brain functions, and giving him certain impressive … abilities … that were lacking from his original design."

_"_Like oozing and stretching and absorbing metal," said Jenny.

"Exactly.  He was getting a little out of hand, so we intervened to make sure he did not absorb _you_."  He grinned.  "After all, the Cluster has big plans for you, XJ-9."

Stanley rocked back and forth, waving his instruments excitedly, almost bouncing up and down.

"Fantastic!  Amazing!  Simply unbelievable!  So that's why there's so much carbon in there.  Not that there's anything wrong with carbon, mind you, it's a lovely little element ..."

"What are you _babbling_ about?" snapped Omicron Twelve.

Stanley pointed at the ten-foot, shimmering silver-green android that held onto Jenny.  "_This _was a _human!!!_  That's why the nano-probes converted the entire mass.  There _was_ no internal circuitry!  There was some metal, but it was just a defective human with a metallic limb!"

Jenny struggled for words – this was all happening so fast.  "Wait – so he wasn't an android after all?  Then wh-what did your stupid nano-probes do to him?"

"They used him as raw materials to make _zillions_ of copies of themselves," Stanley explained proudly.  "That's what they do.  They take atoms from a machine, or a table, or a building, or just about anything with atoms in it.  Which is _everything_!"  Stanley laughed.  "The little dickens do have a taste for metal, though.  Then they re-arrange and manipulate the atoms to create almost anything they want.  They're such clever little devils!"

"Raw … materials?" asked Jenny, in a weak voice.

"They ate him."

"_Ate_ him?"  _Omigosh._

Stanley continued, matter-of-factly.  "From the inside out.  He's one hundred percent nano-probes now."

"Well, whatever he was," said Omicron, "now he belongs to the Cluster."

Omicron Twelve took the robot wasp in one of his small claws, and lowered it towards Jenny's forehead.  Jenny stared at the hideous little insect, its robotic legs wiggling in the air.

"And in a few seconds, XJ-9 … so will you," he chuckled.

Jenny fought back tears.  No matter what she thought of Drew, nobody deserved anything like this.  It was a fate worse than death.  _And they want to do the same thing to me!_  Never before had she felt such complete and total hatred for the Cluster.  With a mighty yell, she fired the rocket boosters in her feet, propelling herself and the Cluster android – she couldn't think of it as Drew anymore, he was gone – into the air.  The Cluster android was taller than her, and its head rammed against the ceiling, hard.  That was enough to loosen its grip.  Jenny grabbed the android's head and flipped it over her shoulder, driving it back into the floor, and knocking both Cluster robots twenty feet backwards.

Jenny landed and planted her fists on her hips, defiantly.

"What part of 'NO WAY' don't you understand?"

Omicron Twelve scrambled back to his feet, still holding the robot wasp, growling.  "XJ-9, we tire of these antics!  Your future is with the Cluster.  You will serve the Queen."  He gestured to the students who remained in the cafeteria.  "And these hairless monkeys will serve you."

He pointed towards his short partner.  "Stanley!  Order the android to capture XJ-9, and enslave the humans infesting this building.  Y'know, you can really never have too many human slaves."

Stanley opened a compartment from his body, and took out a large remote control device covered with buttons, tiny screens, and joysticks.  He started manipulating the controls with all six of his hands.

Jenny stood in a martial arts position, eager to dish out punishment.  "Capture me and everyone else?  _Puh-lease_.  For somebody so _smart_, you don't count very well.  You've only got _one_ android."

Stanley smirked.  "O-ho!  Little Miss Attitude!  Maybe you've heard of … divide and conquer?"

He pressed a red button on his controller.

A hum came from the silver Cluster android.  Its body and limbs started to shimmer silver-green in a now-familiar way … but this time, its whole body dissolved into a huge pile of shiny molasses.  The silvery blob gurgled grotesquely and started to pull apart.  Soon one large blob separated itself into eight smaller blobs.

Jenny watched in amazement as each of the blobs started to grow in height.  Shimmering green patterns flowed over their surfaces as they sprouted gooey branches that turned into arms and hands.  They grew heads, each of which sprouted two glowing green eyes, and where there once stood one large android, there were now eight androids, each six feet tall.

They charged.

The first two lunged for her arms, trying to pin her again.  Jenny let them grab her arms, then spun to her left, slamming the silver android on her right arm into three others that were diving for her legs.  It shook off, but the other one held tight on to her left arm.  Jenny simply swung him over her head, tossing him backwards so hard that he knocked over the remaining two androids, and sailed back into the kitchen.  She flipped backwards and landed upright in a textbook fighting stance, watching the Cluster androids spin around on the floor like bowling pins.

But they recovered quickly.  And as eight regular-sized androids instead of one large one, they moved a lot faster now.  Two androids got back to their feet and dove for Jenny.  She ducked them, then fired her pigtail-jets to leap over three more who came at her next.  Three more, behind her, lifted one of the few remaining unbroken tables, and threw it at her back.  But she turned and caught the massive lunch table, swung it over her head, and slammed it down directly onto two unlucky silver androids.  They didn't even break – they _splattered,_ as if they were made of toothpaste, spraying the walls and floor with a thick silver-green goo.

"Ewww!  All right, Omi-creep Twelve," Jenny said angrily, "now it's _your_ turn."

But before she could take one step towards Omicron, four silver androids tackled her to the floor.  Jenny rolled with the tackle and somersaulted to her feet, delivering a brutal kick that sent one of the androids flying across the room and into a wall.  A couple of punches sent two more androids sailing through the air.  Another two tried to tackle her feet, but Jenny delivered a perfect pair of kicks to their silver-green chins.  They rocketed towards the far wall of the cafeteria, arms and legs flailing like rag dolls, and smashed through it, sailing outside towards the parking lot.

"That's four down, and I'm only using my fists," she grinned towards Omicron Twelve and Stanley.

Amazingly, Omicron Twelve didn't seem concerned at all – he was actually leaning against the wall with his arm.  He pointed behind Jenny with a smug look on his face.

Stanley was working his remote control with all twenty-four fingers, he cranium lights flashing with intense activity.  And he was _chuckling._  "What was it you were saying about … not counting very well?"

"Huh?"  Jenny turned around to see what was left of the androids –

There were _twelve_ of them now.

Parts of the cafeteria wall, floor, and kitchen glistened with a shimmering silver green.  And the shimmering silver patches seemed to be gurgling, oozing, and _growing_.  One of the soda machines was dissolving into a silver paste.  Suddenly, with a disgusting _schlorrrrp_, a stream of silver goo flowed out of what was left of the soda machine, and started taking the shape of a Cluster android.  Two new green eyes flickered to life, and glared at Jenny.

The new silver android charged, joining eight others in another attack on Jenny.  _Okay, time to get serious._  Jenny's hands and wrists split apart, unfolding into a pair of giant fists.  One right cross knocked two silver androids into the wall, shaking loose the plaster with a _clang_.  The left hook blasted three more androids into the air, sending one crashing right through the wall and into the hallway.  The other two tried to wrap themselves – literally – around her arms and legs.  Jenny shook them loose, stepped back, and converted one of her fists into a huge saw blade.  One neat screaming blow sliced both androids in half at the waist.  They flopped to the ground, and started to flow into silver-green goo ... repairing themselves.

A voice shouted from the far wall of the cafeteria.  "JENNY!!! – ack! – Little help!!!"

"Brad!"

Nine silver androids jumped on her back, trying to force her to the floor.  A blast from her rockets sent Jenny into the air.  Eight androids flew limply in random directions; but one clung stubbornly to her back.  She looped and dove straight for one of the few remaining tables.  At the last moment, she pivoted her body to land on her back – cushioned by the silver android, of course.  The force of the blow turned the android into a shimmering silver-green paste.  Now, she could see what was wrong with Brad.

Brad and six other students were clutching at silver-green collars around their necks, each of which was fastened to the cafeteria wall with a strong silver cable.

"Jen!" gasped Brad.  "They just came out of the walls!!!  And they're giving me a rash!!!"

"Oh, man … hang on, guys!"  _They came out of the walls?_

Jenny squinted, and a thin red laser beam shot from her eyes, cutting the collars off of the students' necks one by one.  The last student was wildly gesturing as his collar broke off, as if to say _look behind you … _Jenny turned in time to see _seventeen_ androids coming at her.

"Everybody behind me!" she shouted.  "Brad, get everybody together.  We're getting out of here."

"Out of here is sounding pretty good," he said, rubbing his neck.

Jenny positioned herself between the growing crowd of silver Cluster androids and the remaining students in the cafeteria.  There was an exit on the outside wall that led directly outside.  Jenny raised her arms, and activated the lasers concealed in the palms of her hands.  While Brad led the group towards the exit, Jenny opened fire on the androids.  Rapid-fire, white-hot beams of energy shot out of her palms, cutting into the first row of attackers.  The destruction was spectacular.  Silver androids shuddered and shook as they were pounded by the powerful laser fire.  Androids flew over backwards, some with smoking holes in their bodies.  Some androids simply blew to pieces.  It was almost bothering Jenny – _the stupid things aren't even trying to dodge!_

Brad reached the door and pushed the handle.  The door was locked … and the handle started to shimmer with a silver-green color.

Omicron Twelve, standing a few feet away, still hadn't bulged a robot muscle.  If anything, his smirk was even more arrogant.  "Going somewhere, mammals?"

The entire door quivered into a silvery mass, and small buds started to grow out of it, forming into long, thin arms, with hands reaching towards the students …

"Jenny!" shouted Brad.  "Ahhh … the whole out-of-here thing really isn't happening!!!"

The students screamed, and ran away from the exit.  Jenny gave her lasers a rest, and took a brief moment to look around what was left of the cafeteria.  The floor was littered with broken tables, benches, chairs, and scattered garbage.  Most of the kitchen area was either gone, or dripping with silver-green goo.  The walls, windows, and ceiling were scarred with holes from the ferocity of the battle, and many of those holes had trickles of silver-green syrup dripping from them.  And then there were the green-eyed silver androids, already recovering from Jenny's laser assault, oozing up from large silver puddles on the floor.  Jenny counted twenty-two of them.

"The hallway!" she shouted to the students.  "It's the only way out!"

Brad led the students into the hallway, as Jenny covered their escape with a long wooden bench.  She swung it back and forth like a sword, knocking five or six silver androids into the air with each blow.  Finally, everybody was out of the cafeteria.  Jenny took one last look at the Cluster robot invaders.

Omicron Twelve shook his head.  "Foolish XJ-9 … you are only delaying the inevitable."

She left the cafeteria and joined the crowd in the hallway.  Students that escaped, and curious passers-by, talked and shouted, trying to figure out just what was going on in the cafeteria.  Some were crying and hugging each other.  Some were in a near-panic.  Jenny deployed an arc welding torch from her right elbow, and sealed the cafeteria doors shut.  Hopefully, that would hold those monsters in there for a while.  Now, she just needed to calm everybody down and get them out of the building.  Fortunately, as a global defense robot, crowd control was part of her programming.

A panel in her chest slid upon, and deployed a microphone.  Her pigtails unfolded into loudspeakers.  "Everyone, I need your attention for a minute, please!"

The crowd of students ignored her, buzzing with dozens of separate conversations.

"Excuse me?  Would everyone quiet down, please?"

If anything, the noise of the crowd grew louder.

She reached for a dial inside her chest, and turned it up to "11".

"EVERYBODY SHUT UP!!!!"

The hallway was filled with silent, staring faces, hands clasped over their ears.

"Heh-heh … sorry about that."  Jenny returned her volume to normal.  "Now, we had a little excitement in the cafeteria."  She held her thumb and her finger half an inch apart.  "There was a _little_ situation, but there's no need to panic.  So, if we just all walk down the hallway to the front doors, and head outside, everything will be _just fine._"   _Very professional, if I do say so myself._

One girl at the back of the crowd raised her hand.  "Excuse me?"  Everyone turned to look at her.

She pointed towards her locker.  "What's that?"

A thin stream of silver-green goo dribbled down the front of her locker door.

The crowd looked around.  The hallway was lined with lockers … _metal_ lockers … on either side, and everyone suddenly realized that about one-quarter of them looked like they were splattered with thick silvery paint.  Paint that seemed to be flowing out of the lockers themselves …

Brad grabbed the microphone coming out of Jenny's chest, nearly jerking her off of her feet in the process.

"It's _evil alien robot slime zombies_!!!  In the name of all that's holy, _run for your lives!!!_"

Brad and Jenny were knocked on their backs and nearly trampled underfoot by the wave of panicked students.  Screams rang through the hall, and arms waved in the air as they sprinted down the hallway for the front doors.

Jenny sat up, gently pushed her bent microphone back in her chest cavity, and glared at Brad.  "Thanks a _lot_."

Brad propped himself up on his elbow, grinning with satisfaction.  "No problem, Jen.  Just doing my part to help out."

One of the locker doors flew open, gushing a stream of shimmering silver-green paste onto the floor.  Then a second locker door simply dissolved, also flowing onto the floor.  An electric _hummmm_ echoed in the hallway as two pillars of ooze started to rise, _schlorrrrp,_ up from the silvery mess.  Brad and Jenny scrambled to their feet, and backed away from them, in the direction that the crowd had run off.

But pools of silver molasses were pouring out of the lockers in that direction, too – and to make matters worse, the cafeteria doors that Jenny had just welded shut started to ripple, and warp, as if they were melting.  A few trickles of silver ooze leaked out from the cracks, and started to envelop the doors in a shiny silver glaze.

"Hang on, Brad!"  Jenny's legs cracked open, unfolding and deploying, until her lower body had converted into a powerful set of tank treads.  Her arms unfolded at the elbows, and expanded into a large snowplow blade.  With a blast of throttle and a squeal from her treads, Jenny took off in the direction of the crowd.  Brad hung onto a pair of handlebars which had extended out of her pigtails.  Looking over his shoulder, he saw the cafeteria doors collapse into sludge, and dozens of green-eyed silver androids poured into the hall, sliding and clanking like kitchen pots.

Jenny roared down the corridor in the direction of the front doors.  Lockers and water fountains everywhere were melting into shimmering silver goop.  Puddles of silver-green were leaking out from under the bathroom doors.  And while most of the Cluster androids were behind them, more were springing to life out of the nano-ooze in the hallway.  A dozen silver androids ran towards Jenny, some with arms extended to grab her, some with tentacle-arms, some actually turning their entire bodies into steel cable, trying to slow her down.  Jenny lowered her head and plowed right through them.  Androids clanged and rattled off of her, into the walls and ceiling, stunned.  A couple were flattened under her tank-treads.  Jenny caught the last one right in the middle of her plow blade, neatly slicing him in half top-to-bottom.  The two halves flopped to the floor on either side of her as she rolled on past.

"WOOHOO!!!" Brad yelled, hanging on for dear life.  Dangerous or not, this was a _rush._  "Way to kick Cluster butt, Jen!!!"

"The front doors are right there," she said, as they screeched around a corner to the main entranceway of the school.

And they ground to a halt.

Dozens of thick, shiny silver tentacles wrapped around Jenny, lifting her into the air.  The main entranceway of the school was crawling with dozens of silver androids, and more were pouring from cracks in the walls and the ceiling.  Androids jumped towards Jenny, clutching and wrapping her up in their arms.  Androids climbed the walls and crawled upside-down overhead.  Silver ooze was flowing down the stairwells like a pair of waterfalls, spilling out into thick bubbling pools that spawned even more Cluster androids.  The trophy case, the school statue, the pipes in the walls were gone or dissolved into glistening silver pudding.  More silver-green arms reached up from holes in the floor which led to the boiler room in the basement.

The sudden stop flung Brad into the air, and he landed with a splash in a foot-deep pool of shimmering metallic goop.  Jenny was struggling in the web of silver tentacles and android arms, trying to free herself.  She managed to get her arms transformed back to normal, but each was wrapped tight by at least fifteen androids, plus a few tentacles that simply emerged from the walls.  Every time she managed to wriggle free of one, two more androids would grab on.  She tried to convert her tank-treads back into legs, but the androids had them wrapped up too.  Every move she tried to make was countered by the grip of seventy-three androids, plus wall-tentacles on top of that.

Brad sloshed his way out of the pool of silver slop, trying to think of anything that could help.  Anything around them that was metal, and even some wood and plastic, was being devoured by the flood of Cluster nano-probes.

"Jenny!  Oh, man – hold on!  I'll get you out!"

Jenny strained and struggled.  "Run, Brad!  Run!  Save yourself!"

_No chance of that._  "There's gotta be something around here they're not eating!!!"  But anything Brad could see that was metal had already melted into ooze, or was in the process of melting.  And it's not like he was strong enough to rip the wood out of the walls and use it like a club.  _Those miserable Cluster dorks will do anything to get Jenny.  They're not even paying attention to me …_

Bingo.

Brad took a few running steps and jumped, landing on the back of one of the silver androids coiled around Jenny's left leg.  He started beating its head with his fists.

"You lousy alien robot!"  _Clang!  _"Ouch!  You let Jenny go!!!"  _Clang!  _"Ouch!  Let her go or else!!!"  _Clang!  _"Ouch!"

Brad's blows had no effect on the silver android's metal body.  But it did distract him …

That was all Jenny needed.  Her left leg twisted free enough to retract the tank-tread, and she deployed a grappling hook in its place.  Small but powerful rocket motors blasted the grappling hook down the last remaining Cluster-free hallway, and the hooks latched onto an intact set of sturdy lockers.  With all the power she could summon, Jenny yanked herself free of the silver androids' clutches.  She wrapped one arm around Brad's waist, pulling him to freedom with her.

They lay on the floor for a moment, Brad catching his breath, Jenny restoring her legs to normal, and they glanced back to see what lay behind them.  The front entranceway was totally engulfed in Cluster androids.  They could hear the rumbling and clattering of Cluster androids running down the hallway from the direction of the cafeteria.  They could hear a liquid, slurping sound coming from the walls and the ceiling.  The entire school was being overrun by the Cluster nano-probes.  The only untouched part of the school was this corridor, which led to the gymnasium.

They got up, brushing droplets of silver-green goo off of themselves.  "Ewww, _disgusting_!" said Jenny.  Then she chuckled at Brad.  "My hero."

Brad wiped his hands together.  "Hey, I _said_ you might need my help.  Ouch."  His right hand was still sore from his "rescue".

But a mob of silver, green-eyed androids coming around the corner snapped them back to attention.  Jenny ignited her pigtail-jets, grabbed Brad by the arm, and blasted down the corridor towards the gym.  They flew through the doors, and Jenny slammed them shut, once more welding them closed.

The gym was filled with students.

Brad was relieved to see that the gym still seemed to be normal; the walls, the score clock, the basketball nets were still there.  But he was surprised to see most of the student body was standing in the middle of the hardwood floor, looking confused, nervous, and plenty scared.  He recognized some kids who had been in the cafeteria, where everything had started.  Why hadn't they just run outside, he wondered?  The gym had two pairs of big double doors that led out to the football field and the parking lot.

All the conversations made talking difficult, but Brad managed to grab a sophomore by the shoulders and get his attention.  "Hey, what's going on?  Why is everybody just hanging around?  We got a bit of a crisis here."

"Didn't you see the front doors?" shouted the sophomore.  "All the doors are like that.  The whole place is, like, gooey and shiny, and there's like _arms_ everywhere!!!  This is the only non-freaked-out place left in the whole school!!!"

"Yeah, no _duh_," said Brad.  "But _those_ doors go outside."

"Nobody can get 'em open," whimpered the sophomore.

Jenny ran over to the middle of the gym, joining Brad.  "What's going on?"

"Doors are locked, I guess," said Brad.

"Not for long.  Stand back, guys."

Jenny walked over to the closest set of double doors and tried them.  Sure enough, they wouldn't open.  Well, that wasn't much of an obstacle to a super-powered robot.  He drew back her arm and threw an impressive punch.  The doors ripped off their hinges and sailed outside.

A wave of relief washed over the students, as they moved towards the opening.  Jenny just stood there, though, staring.  That seemed strange to Brad, until he saw what she was looking at.

A shimmering lake of green-tinted nano-ooze slowly boiled and flowed in the afternoon sun, hundreds of feet across, a bubbling pool of silver lava.  The parking lot, the cars in the parking lot, the streetlights, the fence, and the football bleachers were either gone, or melting like silver chocolate.  The two silver androids that Jenny had earlier kicked through the cafeteria wall had landed in the parking lot.  And they'd been busy making copies of themselves.  Green-eyed silver androids walked and crawled all over the ball field, the football field, the yard, and the outside walls of the school.  Silver-green androids marched towards the gymnasium in columns from the edges of the silver lake.  And thick worms of shiny molasses were springing up from lake with slurping, humming noises, growing into dozens and dozens of new Cluster androids.  Brad was speechless.  The whole school ground seemed to be a living carpet of flowing silver.  There were more silver-green androids than he could count.  Jenny had an advanced electronic brain, though, and she had no trouble counting them.

Two thousand, four hundred and seventy-seven.

Seventy-eight …

Seventy-nine …

* * *

CONCLUDED in Chapter Five

* * *


	5. Welcome To The Club

* * *

Android Scam

A "My Life as a Teenage Robot" Fanfic

Chapter Five – Welcome to the Club

* * *

Jenny, Brad, and a few other students stood in front of the open doorway of the gymnasium, staring out at what used to be the school ground.  Everything within two hundred yards of the school looked as if it had been covered with a gurgling layer of silver-green syrup.  Waves and waves of silver androids were sprinting towards the gym.  Thousands of faintly glowing green eyes bore down on their primary target – XJ-9.

Brad and Jenny slowly turned their heads towards each other.

"That," said Brad, "is a _lot_ of robots."

"Everybody get away from the doors!!!" shouted Jenny.  "You too, Brad.  This is going to get nasty."

The sight of an army of charging Cluster androids did plenty to clear away the students.  Jenny extended her arms and activated the lasers in her palms; they'd worked pretty well in the cafeteria.  But she wanted a little something extra now.  A panel opened in the middle of her back, deploying and telescoping over her head into a fantastic particle beam weapon twelve feet long.  It hummed to life with a high-pitched whine, crackling with arcs of electricity.

When the first row of Cluster androids got to within twenty feet, Jenny opened fire.

The barrel of the particle beam glowed white hot.  Blue bolts of energy ripped into the first grouping of silver androids, with lethal results.  Androids flew apart into hundreds of tiny pieces.  Flaming globs of silver goo sprayed the ground and the outside wall of the gym, burning into charred black clumps.  The particle beam cut wide swaths into the advancing waves of Cluster robots.  Jenny joined in with her palm laser-blasts, picking off stragglers that she missed with her more powerful weapon.  Silver bodies flew into the air, sometimes intact, sometimes in pieces.  Sometimes the pieces would liquefy and start to rebuild a new android.  But some of the pieces simply sat burning, or inert.

Jenny allowed herself a confident smile.  _Wow, Mom really did a great job on this thing,_ she thought.  With no power in the school, it was lighting up the inside of the gym like a strobe.  And she was holding the androids off.  They still came, though.  They charged headlong into Jenny's laser and particle fire with a chilling enthusiasm.  _Mindless slaves, in the service of the Cluster.  Well, they're not getting past me._

Unfortunately, there _was_ another set of double doors to the gym.

Jenny heard a loud crashing noise come from behind her, and shouts from the students.  She backed up a few steps and looked to her right, to see dozens and dozens of silver-green androids pouring through a wide hole in the south doors, which were almost completely dissolved away.  They scraped and slid a bit on the slick varnished hardwood, but most were barreling right for her at top speed.  _Oh no._

She turned her arms to fire at the androids inside the gym … she wanted to avoid using the particle beam indoors if she could.  Once again, silver androids were catapulted into the air as Jenny's blasts landed.  But now her attention was divided into two directions, and she was having a hard time keeping track of two attacks at once …

That was when the doors from the hallway rippled into a silver-green paste and sloughed away like melting fudge.  The androids from the hallway, the front doors, and the cafeteria poured into the gym, spilling over each other, analyzing the gymnasium.  There were over two hundred Cluster androids inside the gym already, with more streaming in every second.

A large group of androids broke away from their attack on Jenny, and started approaching the students menacingly, backing them into the northwest corner of the gym.

Jenny looked over her shoulder in alarm.  "Guys!  Hold on!  I'll be right there!"

She backed away from the open doorway.  The Cluster androids were already inside the gym; there was no sense in trying to keep this bunch out.  Jenny ran sideways, trying to hold off legions of silver androids with her palm lasers, trying to reach her friends.  As soon as she stopped firing with her particle beam, a column of silver androids poured in through the open doors.

Jenny deactivated her beam weapons, and cracked open her elbow joints.  A long blade extended from each arm, unfolding and extending into a pair of ten-foot long machetes.  Jenny churned her arms furiously, sweeping her way through the crowd of androids in the gym.  Slices of silver android clattered to the floor and sailed into the air as Jenny made her way towards her friends, trying to defend them from Cluster enslavement.  It was really getting crowded in there now, what with the student body corralled off to one wall, and upwards of four hundred silver androids running in circles around Jenny, trying to formulate a plan of attack.

Suddenly Jenny was knocked off her feet by a blow from above.  Eight silver androids had jumped at her from the top of the wall, where a fresh hole to the outside had just been dissolved away, ushering in yet another group of invaders.  Jenny rolled on the floor, and instantly, fifty-five Cluster androids pounced, trying to immobilize her.

With a quick adjustment, Jenny's machetes converted into chainsaws, and revved up to full power.  She lashed out her left arm in a wide arc, filling the air with hundreds of metallic silver fragments, and dozens of mangled androids.  Back on her feet, she had to keep swinging her arms, left and right, to beat her way through the silver horde, trying to get between the students and the attackers.  Suddenly she felt half a dozen hands against her back.  She swung her right leg backwards, kicking two Cluster androids with such force that they sailed through the ceiling like bottle rockets.  More androids came at her from the front.  She swung her leg forward, converted it into a jackhammer, and started lunging with it.  Her attackers vibrated furiously and exploded into silver gravel.

_Don't care how many there are.  I'm not giving up._

The Cluster androids surrounding the students started to shimmer, and stretch.  They started crossing and overlapping their arms and legs, transforming their android bodies into a living fence.  The student body was now imprisoned within a silver holding pen.  The Cluster had herded every human in the school to one spot, for easy collection.  An exercise in robotic efficiency.

And the androids were learning.  While they were mindlessly happy to rush into one of Jenny's withering attacks, they seemed to realize that attacking from many directions at once would eventually wear Jenny down.  Androids started leaping through the air, to attack her from above.  Androids further away from her would co-operate to toss still other androids at her, like a medieval catapult.

Jenny retracted her chainsaws and jackhammer, and deployed a pair of large steel mallets from her arms.  She cut through the air even faster now, with a frenzy borne of fury and desperation.  The heavy mallet head connected with android chests, android heads, android backs, with such speed that the gym was filled with a sound like machine gun fire.  Crushed and deformed androids sailed into the air almost as fast as fresh androids jumped back towards Jenny.  Puddles of shimmering silver-green sludge started to form on the gym's hardwood floor as the damaged Cluster androids paused to repair themselves, before rejoining the battle.

Jenny felt arms start to coil around her neck and back.  Frantically, she shrugged them off, spun around, and swung both mallet-hands over her head, coming down brutally on her android attackers.  The androids sprayed into a curtain of silver paste, but she instantly felt more arms coiling around her right arm and right leg.

_Too many.  There's just too many … No way.  I'm not giving up._

Bright twin jets of flame blasted from her pigtails, and Jenny took to the air in the spacious gymnasium.  The roof was forty feet high in here.   She managed to peel off three androids from her back, launching them into the seething crowd like missiles.  Now that she was above the floor, she could get a good look at the situation.

The students were trapped in a living cage of silver, but didn't appear to be in any immediate danger.  Every square foot of space on the hardwood was covered by silver androids, all focused on _her_.  They were starting to climb the walls.  More androids poured in from both double-doors, and through four different holes in the south and east walls.  While she had destroyed hundreds in the past few minutes, the number of androids inside the gym only continued to grow.  There were currently six hundred and thirty-one.  On top of that, streams of silver-green goo were starting to drip down the walls, as the pipes were consumed by the nano-probes.  The scoreboard was starting to warp and melt.  Silver sludge was dripping from the ventilation ducts overhead …

The bottom of two ventilation shafts broke open, and dozens of silver androids dropped towards Jenny from above.  She was surprised momentarily, but weaved back and forth until she could unhinge her elbows to deploy two massive laser rifles.  Hovering with her pigtails, Jenny opened fire on the attack from the ceiling.  Bright white pulses of laser fire filled the air.  Androids shuddered and splattered into silver chunks, tumbling past Jenny to clatter against the floor below. 

The mob of androids on the floor continued their strategy of catapulting attackers at Jenny from all sides.  The androids on the walls were jumping off at her, like huge silver insects.  And the androids beneath her could either leap up to grab onto her legs, or extend tentacle-arms to try and haul her back down to the floor.  New waves of androids dropped from the ceiling.  She was being assaulted from every direction.

_All right.  That's enough._  Jenny split open her pale blue leg housings, deploying an additional pair of huge plasma cannons that were bigger than the laser rifles on her arms.  She opened up with everything she had.  Blasts of laser and plasma ripped through the air, knocking androids into the walls, splitting them into pieces, shattering them into smoking debris.  The room pulsed with yellow and orange flashes, and a deafening roar of laser fire and shattered metal filled the room.  Jenny started to rotate in mid-air, firing in all directions, up and down, three hundred and sixty degrees, until she was a barely visible pale blue blur, dishing out a staggering amount of scorching firepower.  The silver Cluster androids were cut down in the hundreds.  They started to fall back.  Jenny was gaining the upper hand …

But that was when she heard the first _crack._

In her desperation and excitement, she forgot about the actual building itself.  In a short amount of time, it had suffered an astonishing amount of damage from her weapons, and from the feeding nano-probes.  The wall surfaces that were not covered with dripping silver goo were scarred black with laser and plasma strikes.  So was the ceiling.  And a small crack in the ceiling, directly above the trapped students, grew rapidly larger.

Suddenly, a fifteen-foot slab broke loose and fell from the ceiling.  The students screamed and tried to shield themselves, but could barely move.

"_Oh, no!!!  _They'll be crushed!!!"  With amazing speed, Jenny retracted her lasers, sped over to the holding pen, and caught the debris.

But that short break in her defense was all the androids needed.  Ninety-six Cluster androids leapt off of the wall, knocking her and the roof debris to the middle of gym floor.

Silver arms wrapped around her torso, her neck, her legs.  She managed to knock a few away, but hundreds of androids were waiting for her on the floor.  Androids coiled themselves around Jenny's legs and then drove their own arms and legs into the floor, turning into restraints.  Androids wrapped tentacle-arms around Jenny's arms, immobilizing her.  Still more androids – hundreds of them – stretched and intertwined their bodies into living steel cables, securing her arms to the walls and ceiling.  Androids even molded their arms into plugs for her pigtail-jets.  Jenny grimaced and struggled, trying to find some degree of freedom in her living silver shackles.  But whenever she tried to break the pull of the silver Cluster swarm, the strain started to crack the walls of the gym.  Jenny was extremely strong, and would have eventually broken free, even from the grip of nine hundred and fourteen androids.  But not without pulling the gym down on top of her, and the trapped students.

She sighed, and stopped struggling.  Jenny managed to glance over towards the students, packed tight like sardines in their Cluster cage.  They knew Jenny was their only hope against the invaders, and now that hope was lost.  A few sobs drifted from the crowd.

"Sorry, guys," said Jenny, her pigtails drooping.

Among the student prisoners, Brad was pressed up against the fence.  He had watched every second of his friend's amazing fight.  "You were awesome, Jen," he said, trying to smile.

Jenny tried to smile back, but couldn't.  She knew she was in serious trouble.

The echo of a pair of metal claws, slowly clapping, filled the gym.

"Well, Brah-vooo, that was quite a display, XJ-9," said a loud, metallic, sarcastic voice.

Omicron Twelve strolled casually into the gymnasium from the hallway, in no particular hurry, and clasped his claws behind his back.  He glanced around at the destruction, looking a bit bored.  Stanley sped in right behind him, with his cranium-lights flashing, and actively working his remote control with all six of his hands.

The tall red insectoid strolled arrogantly up to Jenny, pinching her cheek.  "Gotten all of that out of our system, have we?  Hmmm?  Ready to come to our senses?"

Jenny yanked her face away, giving Omicron a hateful look that could've burned through a cinder block.

Stanley glanced around the gym, looking very impressed.  "Sweet Mother of Asimov!"  He whistled.  "You really tore this place up, little lady!  Let's see … eight minutes and forty-two seconds.  I have to admit, you gave my nano-probe army more than I bargained for.  By my calculations, you should have been captured over sixty-five seconds ago.  I never thought you would go past eight minutes.  Never."

Omicron grinned smugly at Stanley, who rolled his eyes.  "All right, all right, I guess I owe you ten bucks."

Jenny growled at them, with a bit of fear and a lot of fury.  "I'll NEVER join the Cluster.  _NEVER_."

Omicron chuckled.  "Well, it's not exactly like you have a choice."

He turned to walk towards the students, staring down to intimidate them.  "_Yechhh_.  This is the scrawniest batch yet.  Humans, let this be a lesson to you.  In all the known universe, none are more powerful than the Cluster."

He slowly paced, strutting in front of his prisoners.  "The noble robot is naturally a more advanced form of life than miserable meat puppets like yourselves.  And the Cluster is the highest achievement of robotkind in the galaxy.  Once XJ-9 understands this, we will welcome her into the Cluster family, and she will rule over you like a queen.  A queen … loyal to Queen Vexus, of course.

Hundreds of silver-green androids continued to walk and crawl around the gym, staring at their masters with featureless green eyes.  Even with Jenny immobile, extra androids approached her to add their strength to her bonds.  The Cluster wasn't taking any chances this time.

Omicron Twelve and Stanley, flanked by a dozen silver Cluster androids, strolled over to stand a few feet from Jenny.  The Warrior Commander held out one of his arms, producing a small yellow box.

Jenny strained in her android-arm bonds, enough that flakes of plaster started to drift from cracks in the ceiling.  "You can't hold me forever!"

Omicron reached into the box and pulled out a small, black-and-yellow robot wasp.  "We only _need_ to hold you for fifteen seconds."

Jenny tried to move her head away, but twenty-six silver hands clamped on to hold it steady.  More silver androids approached to fully immobilize her.

Omicron held the wasp out for Jenny to see, and then dropped it on top of her head.

"_No!_" she squealed.

"Now it just has to gain access to your internal systems.  Hmmm.  The eye sockets?  Maybe the mouth?"

Jenny slammed her eyelids and held her mouth closed, as tight as she could.  She could feel the Cluster wasp walking around the top of her head, looking for a way inside … _Ewww … ewww … ewww …_

"Ah yes, there is a seam on the back of her neck.  That'll do nicely."

"Never … join … never …"

The robotic insect crawled down her metal cheek.

Jenny felt the _clickety-clickety-click_ of its tiny legs on the back of her neck …

Then it was gone.

Jenny was cringing, expecting the worst, expecting some Cluster signal to start broadcasting instructions into her brain immediately, turning her into a drooling robot slave.

But she didn't feel differently at all.

She cracked open her eyes.  _What's going on?_

Omicron Twelve and Stanley had the same look on their faces as well.  Omicron was confused, and was shouting at Stanley.  "What are you _doing_?  What do you _think_ you're _doing_?"

Stanley was madly working every control on his handheld remote.  "I'm not doing anything!  This doesn't make any sense!!!"

Standing between Jenny and the two Cluster robots was a single, shimmering silver-green android.  And in its hand was the little yellow robot wasp – that it had just picked off of Jenny's neck.

The silver android was behaving strangely, almost as if it was having convulsions.  It shivered, and heaved, and closed its green eyes, as if in pain.  Its mouth was twisted into a snarl.  _Wait a second – its mouth?_

The silver android heaved one more time and … _spat._

Jenny couldn't help herself.  "Ewww … excuse _you_."  _Too weird._

The silver android was now holding _two_ little yellow-and-black robot wasps, their legs wriggling madly, in its hand.  It made a fist, and with a wonderful crunching sound, it ground the little demons into smears of metal flakes.

Then it turned its head, a head with a mouth and pale green eyes – eyes with pupils in them.  It spoke to Jenny, slowly.  A single word.  "_Remote._"

She was dumbstruck.  _What is that supposed to mean?_

The silver face repeated itself.  "_Remote_."

Jenny glanced at Omicron Twelve and Stanley, who were now very agitated and upset, bickering amongst themselves.  "Get the link back!  What's wrong with that stupid thing?  Boost the signal!"

She looked back to the strange silver android.  Its mouth turned into a tired smile.

"We androids … have to look out for each other … right?"

Her mouth dropped open.  "_Drew?_"

The two Cluster robots started to argue loudly now, snapping Jenny's attention back to her predicament.  _He said "Remote."_  _Remote?  Where have I heard that …_

Time seemed to slow down, and Jenny remembered a conversation from the day before.

_"So, all these radio waves beaming at our school are for what, exactly?" asked Brad.  "A Cluster radio station?"_

_"Most certainly not," answered Mom.  "They are most likely some form of remote control signal."_

A remote control signal … _Mom was picking up their remote control signal yesterday!  Mom was right all along! _ _Oh, BROTHER.  She's NEVER going to let me hear the end of this.  I can hear her now.  'I told you so, young lady.'  'Always listen to your mother, XJ-9!'  Aaarrrgh._

Jenny looked back towards Omicron and Stanley, who were paying more attention to Stanley's remote control than they were to her.  _His remote control … does he actually control _every single one_ of these Cluster zombie creeps with that thing?  Is that what 'remote' means?_

Jenny squinted, and her eyes grew red-hot.  A beam of energy shot out of her eyes and blasted the remote control out of Stanley's hands, searing them in the process.  The complex controller broke into flaming pieces of metal and plastic, and crumbled to the floor.

Stanley screamed in anguish.  "NOOOO!!!"

He spun around in circles, waving his burning hands in the air.  Omicron Twelve looked completely lost, and more than a little nervous.

Throughout the gymnasium, one thousand, six hundred and eight-eight pairs of silver android eyes dimmed to a dull green, and looked … confused.  The silver androids stood around idly, suddenly without orders or instructions.  Jenny could see it on their faces, and she could feel it in the slight slackening of their collective grip …

"HI-YAAAAHHH!!!"

With a triumphant yell, Jenny drove her arms free of the hundreds of androids imprisoning her, sending silver bodies tumbling through space like dandelion seeds.  The androids who had coiled together to form the living cables simply and stupidly fell to the floor with a crash that shook the whole gym.  Hundreds of silver-green androids _clanged_ off of the walls.  Her arms now free, Jenny cracked open her elbows and deployed another set of blades that expanded into a pair of long samurai swords.  With a blur of swift strikes, she broke free of her leg restraints, and jumped into the air, sending even more androids flying in the process.  She somersaulted and landed five feet in front of Omicron Twelve and Stanley, in a fighting pose and a mood for payback.

"You know, guys, I guess I just haven't gotten it all out of my system," she grinned.

Omicron Twelve and Stanley stopped arguing.  They turned and stared.  Stanley's cranium lights stopped flashing.

"Ho boy."

Jenny swung her right arm with blinding speed and brought it to a stop one-half inch from Stanley's stunned face.  "Bring him back," she ordered.

Stanley, still waving his blackened fingers, stammered with confusion.  "Bring _who_ back?  I don't know what you're talking about!  Aaaarrghh, how did this happen?"

"Insolent young robot!" bellowed Omicron Twelve.  "Nobody gives orders to the Cluster!!!"  A panel on his massive right forearm opened, deploying a twin-barreled energy weapon that was humming to life.

_Schwick!_

Jenny just smiled at Omicron Twelve.  He didn't understand why until he saw the lower half of his right arm, weapon and all, neatly slide off and crash to the floor.  Electricity crackled from both halves of his severed limb.

"Ahhhhh … technically, nobody gives us orders, but, it's always a pleasure to talk to a fine young robot like yourself, miss.  Heh-heh.  Please continue."

"_Thank_ you."  Jenny turned back to the Cluster scientist.  "You created these monsters.  Now you can un-create them and bring Drew back."

Stanley huffed and waved his six arms at jenny.  "Drew?  Wha – you mean the naked monkey with the metal peg-leg?  You silly robot!  Haven't you been listening?"  Jenny lightly tapped Stanley's body with the tip of her sword, cutting off the tip of a small antenna.  "Silly?  I meant charming!  _Charming_ young robot!  You know, if I had a daughter, I'd want her to be a spunky little minx like you …"  Jenny's eyes told him _I'm starting to lose my patience._

Stanley tried to gather himself.  "Look, I told you kid, he's gone.  Kaput.  The nano-probes converted him.  They can't un-eat him any more than one of your little human friends can un-eat a tuna sandwich.  It's a moot point, anyway.  Their software seems to be corrupted.  They stopped responding to the signal.  The system is about to crash."

"What do you mean, crash?"

Stanley continued, wiggling his fingers.  "My nano-probes are little smarties, but, the Cluster, ehh, we're not really big on independent thinking, free will, that sort of thing.  So the remote control signal allowed me to give orders to the androids.  We wanted to make sure that they were only doing what we wanted them to do.  And now, thanks to _you_, Miss Heat Vision, that signal has been cut off.  The nano-probes …" Stanley mourned, "… oh, my beautiful little nano-probes … without a command signal, they're going to activate their safeties."

"And what does _that_ mean?" demanded Jenny.

The floor begin to gently shake with a faint vibration.  The background noise of slurping ooze seemed to change.  From a distance, outside the school, they head a hiss, and a low rumble.

Stanley sped to the open doors of the gym, startling Jenny with his boldness.  Omicron Twelve lurched over behind him.  Jenny followed them both, keeping an eye on the two Cluster invaders, and to see what the strange noise was coming from outside.

The silver nano-ooze had spread to cover several acres in shimmering silver-green sludge.  But now, the ooze was boiling and bubbling, gurgling frantically, shooting thin tendrils into the air that plopped harmlessly back to earth.  The entire surface of the lake no longer rolled with thick waves of syrupy goo; instead, it seethed with a chaos of silver-white froth.  Thousands of silver-green androids stood motionless, staring in random directions with dull gray eyes.  A low, dull rumble seemed to come from all directions, from the far outside edge of the nano-probe's expanse.

The nano-probes frothed a bright yellow, with a sound that could almost pass for a shriek, and collapsed into a coarse gray ash.  A thin curtain of dust drifted up from the boundaries of the school property, as the nano-probes started to commit mass suicide.  A thin strip of yellow started to flow over the nano-ooze like a wave, with a high-pitched hiss, turning shiny silver fluid into inert gray sand.  The yellow strip rushed towards the school.

Stanley waved his six blackened hands in the air.  "Oh, no, no, _noooo_ … all that work for _nothing!!!_"

Omicron Twelve punched Stanley in the back of the head.  "Well, that's just great.  Way to go, '_most highly evolved robotic intelligence known to the galaxy'." _

The yellow stripe roared closer to the school, leaving a thick layer of sandy gray ash behind it.  The rumbling and vibrations grew a little stronger.  The stripe washed over the football bleachers, turning them from oozing silver to gray ash, and they collapsed to the ground with a _hiss_ like a sand castle.  The thick deep lake, where the parking lot used to be, went next, seething and frothing into ash with a spine-curdling scream.  The streetlights, the backstop on the ball field, any structure of nano-probes collapsed into a gray sand dunes.  Silver androids shuddered briefly as the yellow stripe washed over them, then frothed into a  bright yellow and turned to ash, falling into the gray carpet now covering the ground.

Omicron Twelve grabbed Stanley's head in his massive left claw and took a few steps backward from the door.  "Well, there's six months' research budget down the old recycling tubes.  All right, we're out of here.  Farewell, XJ-9!!!  Mark my words, one day, you will join the Cluster!  One day soon!!!"  He pressed a button on his torso, and the two Cluster robots were enveloped in crackling, purple sphere of energy.  They started to dematerialize before Jenny's eyes.

"The Queen is going to nail my chassis to the wall for this one," moaned Omicron Twelve.

Stanley obsessed over his burned hands.  "_Oy_, I'll never play the piano again."

They faded into nothingness, and with one last flash of bright purple light, and a spiraling blast of wind, the Cluster invaders were gone.

The nano-probes were flashing into coarse soot in all directions.  The yellow stripe was more like a giant ring around the school, and it was shrinking towards the gym.  The walls, furniture, and tables in the cafeteria flashed into froth and sunk into a layer of gray sand.  A sound like a hissing wave rushed through the hallways as the nano-probes flashed into yellow foam, leaving harmless piles of soot and ash behind.

The walls of the gym started to shake along with the floor, and the rumbling drew closer.  The students exchanged looks of renewed concern.  With the Cluster robots gone, Jenny ran back towards the middle of the gym, weaving her way through silver Cluster androids that simply ignored her now.  She stopped to look for one android in particular – the only one with eyes and a mouth, that had saved her from the robot wasp.  It was motionless like the other hundreds of silver androids.  But she could see a touch of fear in its eyes.

Suddenly, the hissing noise filled the gymnasium as the yellow stripe contracted towards the crowd of androids.  Hundreds of androids frothed into a foam with a bright yellow flash, and collapsed into piles of sandy soot, covering the hardwood of the gym with a layer two feet thick.  Androids clinging to the walls sloughed into ash and flowed to the floor.  Gray sandy ash poured from the overhead ventilation ducts.  The yellow stripe washed over the living cage holding the students, which foamed, and blew into the air as a shower of sand.  Students tumbled forwards into the sooty residue, released from their brief stint as prisoners.

And the remainder of the silver androids foamed and flashed yellow, as the Cluster safety shutdown finally ran to completion.  One by one, pillars of gray sandy ash collapsed to the floor.  Jenny watched the android in front of her froth a bright yellow, and turn into a statue of light grey ash, which blew into the air –

No, only a thin layer of dust from the surface of the android, which looked a little different now.

Jenny gazed in amazement.

A six-foot humanoid figure stood in front of her, its color a mix of light and dark grays.  A few dull green stripes ran over its surface, in jagged patterns, like a circuit board.  And its face looked almost human, with a nose, mouth with clenched teeth, and two eyes tightly closed shut.  A swath of dark gray metal on top of its head suggested hair.  The face looked familiar.

The android shuddered slightly, its eyes opened with a faint green glow, and it spoke.

"Reboot Complete!  Thank you for using Android OS 2000.  Good-bye!"

Then the glow faded away, leaving a pair of white eyes with black pupils.

The android blinked, looking rather stunned.

"Drew?" asked Jenny, softly.

The android blinked a few more times.

"I _think_ so."

The students started to walk and run around the gym, stomping through gray sand, kicking it in the air, shouting with joy.  A large group, led by Brad, surrounded Jenny, patting her on the back and shoulders, filling the gym with cheers of  "Way to go!" and "You da bomb!"

A look of relief came over Drew's face.  "_Ohhhh_ … the voices are _gone_.  Oh, my freaking head."  He rubbed his forehead, then held his hands – his _new_ hands – in front of him, turning them over, inspecting them with a stunned look on his face.  He made a fist and gently rapped the side of his head.  Sure enough – the sound of metal on metal.

Jenny grabbed Drew by the shoulders – he looked like he would faint in shock at any moment.  "Drew?  You okay?  What do you remember?"

"All of it."  He gulped, hard.  "I think I'd like to sit down for a minute.  Unfortunately … I think I ate all the chairs."

Brad eased his hands into his pockets, looking around the inside of the remains of the gym.  You could see outside through nine different holes in the walls and the ceiling.  And as bad as it was, it was essentially the only room in the school left standing.  Bits and pieces of debris continued to drop to the ground, kicking up fine gray dust that drifted lightly in the air.

He smiled at Jenny.  "So, think we'll get off early today?"

* * *

Drew was lying flat on a metal table, staring up at an intimidating device that glowed and crackled with orange arcs of electrical discharge.  Motors whined, tilting a long metal probe to point directly at his head.  A droning hum increased in volume, filling the basement of the Wakeman home.  "Um, Dr. Wakeman, not that I don't appreciate this and all, but … is this thing safe?"

"Please!  It's _perfectly_ safe," she answered, as she dropped the large black goggles over her eyes.  Then she put on a safety helmet, pulled on a pair of thick, heavy leather gloves, and stepped behind a thick metal panel labeled _Blast Shield_.  "All right, here we go!"  She flipped a knife switch, beneath a sign reading _Danger High Voltage_, and a deep _thrummm_ echoed in the room.

"No phone call from the governor, I guess."  Drew gulped as the probe shone with a brilliant white light, spitting off bolts of electricity.  The probe fired a bright scanning beam that swept over the length of Drew's metallic body, head to feet and back again.  _Sort of feels like I'm in a giant copy machine.  Made of a million needles._

"There," said Mrs. Wakeman, removing her safety equipment, "now that wasn't so bad, was it?  Honestly, you teenagers are so melodramatic."

Drew slid up, blinking from the lights, and sat on the edge of the table.  He pointed at a large video display on the wall.  "Is that what I look like on the inside?"

Mrs. Wakeman was already studying the full body scan.  The image looked like an x-ray, but Drew's insides appeared flowing and featureless.  There was a kind of structure, but it spread throughout his body like a honeycomb, rather than a skeleton, or a chassis.  Strong and flexible.  No bones, no organs, no muscles.  No gears, no pumps, no motors.

"Fascinating," she mumbled.  "Variable atomic structure.  Distributed energy generation.  Non-centralized molecular computing."  She rubbed her hands together with glee.  "Oh, I feel like a little girl on Christmas morning!  When XJ-9 asked me to help discover what had happened to you, Andrew, I had _no_ idea it would involve the latest Cluster technology!  The research possibilities are _endless_!  Now where to begin, where to begin …"

The basement door opened, and heavy footsteps _clanked_ down the stairs.  Jenny was carrying a large wooden crate on one shoulder that had to weigh at least five hundred pounds.  "Mom?  I'm back.  I got that spare part for your cyclotron that you asked for."

Mrs. Wakeman was going through reams of data on one of her computer screens, excitedly jotting down notes on a clipboard.  "Hmm?  Oh, thank you XJ-9, just set that down anywhere."  She turned back to her computers.

Jenny dropped the crate to the floor.  "Hey, Drew!  So, how's the examination going?"

"Check it out," said Drew, pointing to the video display.  "I'm a six-foot blob of metallic pizza dough."

"Let's just take a closer look now, shall we?"  Mrs. Wakeman picked up a thin metal wand and walked over next to Drew.  "Just extend your pinkie finger, if you please, Andrew."

Drew stuck out the pinkie on his right hand, a bit wary.  "O-kay."

Mrs. Wakeman clicked a button on the metal wand, and a glowing, six-inch energy blade leapt out.  With a quick flick of her wrist, she sliced off Drew's pinkie finger, catching it with a sample dish in her other hand.  A moment of horror flashed on Drew's face, until he saw the smoldering stub of his finger shimmer and turn a shiny silver.  A thin silver-green blob oozed out of the stub, forming into a new finger.  In five seconds, his hand was restored to normal.

Drew stared, a little stunned, at Mrs. Wakeman.  "Doc, I'm going to _assume_ you knew that was going to happen."

"I had a ninety-two percent confidence level," she answered.  "Now, I'm just going to run this nano-probe sample through the quantum microscope.  Don't go anywhere!"  She shuffled off to a different part of the basement.

Jenny pointed at Drew's hand.  "Wow.  _That_ was a neat trick."

"Yeah," said Drew, "it's a good thing I seem to be built to take punishment."

"So how are you holding up?"

"Well, your mom's scanned me, electrocuted me, irradiated me, sampled me … like I said, it's a _good thing_ I seem to be built to take punishment."

"No, no," giggled Jenny.  Then her face turned serious.  "I mean, how are you doing?"

"_Oh_.  Well, I feel … pretty good, I guess."

"You okay?"

"Yeah … yeah, sure."

"Okay," said Jenny.  _I guess he just doesn't want to talk about it._.  "Well … that's good, then."

They were silent for a few awkward seconds.

Then Drew sighed, and took a deep breath.  "Yesterday, I was pretty freaked out.  When I got home … my mom and dad took it pretty hard.  Can hardly blame them.  After mom finally unlocked the bathroom door and came out, they said we should go to the doctor.  We went to the hospital, and the doctor said I should go to a mechanic.  We went to a garage, and the mechanic said I should go to an exorcist."

"_Ouch,_" said Jenny.  "That's pretty harsh."

"Couldn't sleep last night.  I just laid on the bed, staring at the ceiling, thinking.  Wondering if I was even still 'Drew'.  Wondering why this had to happen to me.  Basically, feeling sorry for myself.  And that's when I realized that, even with this nano-whatzit business, _nothing_ was really any different.  _Nothing_ had changed.  There I was, feeling sorry for myself, like I have every day of my life, since the accident.  When I lost my leg."

"But … that had to be pretty tough."

"Yeah, it was, but did it give me the right to be a jerk?  And shoot my mouth off?"  Drew lowered his head, ashamed.  "And … lie to a friend to trick her into taking care of two thugs?  And hurt her feelings?  Jenny … I never really did finish my apology.  I lied to you, and I was selfish, and it was a cruddy thing to do to a pretty decent person.  I don't know _why_ you got your mom to help me out."

Jenny smiled, flattered that Drew had used the word _person_ instead of _robot_.  "Aw, Drew … it's no biggie.  I was feeling a little sorry for myself, too.  Sometimes it's just hard to be the only robot at school, and when I heard the kids call you 'Android', well, I didn't feel quite so alone."

Drew smiled back at her.  "That's how I felt after the ball game.  It was just nice to know that there was one other person at school who knew what it felt like to be made of metal."

He chuckled, and rapped his fist against Jenny's shoulder, then his own, each time making a soft metallic _clang_.  "Now more than ever."

They both smiled silently at each other, feeling not quite so alone anymore.

"And besides …"  He laughed, lifted his legs – _both_ of them – and wiggled his feet.  "One.  Two.  Un.  Deux.  Uno.  Dos."

Jenny put a hand on his shoulder.  "I'm glad you're okay."

Drew grinned.  "Better watch that.  I haven't had dinner yet."

Jenny snatched her hand away.  "_Yipes_! … Augh, why you –"

Then they were both startled, by loud footsteps spilling down the basement stairs.  Brad ran down, with Tuck a few steps behind him, looking nervous.

"Come on, Jenny, what's the hold-up?" asked Brad.  "Everybody's headed over to Mezmer's."

"Hey, Brad," she answered.  "Just had to run a quick errand for Mom."

"Brad, I don't think we should be down here … WHOA!"  Tuck gasped at Drew.  "Jenny's mom built another _freaky robot_!!!"

Jenny glanced towards Drew, and giggled.  "Awww, that's what he used to call _me_."

Brad ignored his little brother, and looked around at the fantastic machinery in Mrs. Wakeman's basement lab.  "Ni-i-i-ce setup your mom has down here, Jen."  Then he noticed Drew, still sitting on the examination table.  "Hey, Drew!  So what's the story?"

"Hey, Brad," said Drew.  "Is that your little brother Tuck?"

"You mean the small, pathetic creature clinging to my pant leg?  Yup."

Drew waved.  "Hey, little dude."

Tuck peeked out from behind Brad's leg.  "Keep your distance, abomination."

"And … nice to meet you too.  Well, Brad, you know those frogs we cut up in biology class?"

"Yeah?"

"I'm starting to feel like one of them."

From the far corner of her lab, Mrs. Wakeman made her way back to the examination table.  "Oh, please.  I sliced off one little finger.  Well, I'm finished with it.  Here."  She held out the sample tray with Drew's severed digit.

Drew smirked at Brad and Tuck.  "Watch this, guys."

Drew touched the metal fragment with his index finger, which started to shimmer silver-green.  The metal turned into a thick liquid, and flowed into Drew's hand.

Tuck's jaw nearly dropped off his face.  "_Whoa._  She's feeding it!"

"Oh, this is simple self-repair," continued Mrs. Wakeman.  "The nano-probes are capable of performing metamorphic activity!"

Drew raised a puzzled eyebrow.  "They _what_ now?"

"Observe!  First, we provide stimulation."  Mrs. Wakeman reached into her lab coat, and pulled a metal baton with a forked tip.  She jabbed Drew in the leg, and the prongs beeped, flashing a pale violet.

Drew's body exploded outward with a _schlorrrp _into a surreal spiral of thick, silver coils.  His head disappeared, folding into his body, which stretched out into a thin wide sheet.  The whole silver mess collapsed to the floor, covering everybody and everything in thick strands of silver-green taffy.

"AAAAIIIIGHHH!!!" screamed Tuck.  "It's EATING ME!!!"  His little arms thrashed around frantically, trying to brush off the silver.

But no sooner had everyone started to pick themselves out of the silvery mess than it retracted off of them, quickly withdrawing back towards the table into an pear-shaped blob.  It twisted, stretched and oozed until it regained humanoid form, then shimmered a bit, until once again Drew was sitting on the table … looking like he had just stepped off a roller coaster.

Drew glared at Mrs. Wakeman.  "GEEZ, Doc!!!  You wanna maybe give me a little _warning_ before you do something like that again?!?"

She simply jotted notes down on her clipboard.  "Variable ductile properties.  Interesting ..."

Brad smoothed out his vest.  "O-kay, _that_ was disturbing.  Anyway, like I said, Jen, everybody's headed over to Mezmer's.  We're throwing a little 'we're-not-slaves' party, and we can't start without you.  You saved everybody in the whole school!"

"Wow, a party sounds great!" said Jenny.  "But I couldn't have done it without Drew.  I thought I was a Cluster zombie for sure, until you destroyed that _disgusting_ little wasp robot."

"Yeah," said Brad, scratching his chin.  "How did you do that, anyway, Drew?  I thought you were being mind-controlled or something."

"I was," explained Drew.  "It was too weird.  My head was filled with voices, telling me what to do, and I couldn't resist them.   But when there was a whole mess of androids in the gym, it was like … man, I don't know.  It was like I was able to concentrate on the one single android with the wasp and ignore the voices for a few seconds.  I don't know how."

"Well I would think the answer would be quite obvious," said Mrs. Wakeman.  "The Cluster nano-probes were designed to infect and overtake XJ-9's electronic mind.  But when they infected you, instead of a highly tuned precision computer, they found a random, disorganized, chaotic, teenage brain.  The most unmanageable thing in the known universe."

Mrs. Wakeman continued taking notes, oblivious to the nasty stares she was getting.

Jenny broke up the silence.  "So Mom – can I go to the party?  Come on, please?"

Her mother tapped a pencil to her chin.  "Well, I suppose.  After all, I'm probably going to be busy down here for another five or six hours.  Just remember to monitor your remote alarm."  She gave Jenny a nasty look.  "And _leave it turned on_ this time."

"Sure thing, Mom, whatever.  All right, guys, let's go!"

Jenny, Brad and Tuck stomped up the stairs, heading for the celebration downtown.

Drew turned to Mrs. Wakeman.  "Five or six _hours?_"

"Hmmm?" she said.  "Oh, maybe less, maybe more.  We need to discover the properties of your artificial body, for your own safety.  The sooner we get started, the sooner we finish.  You cannot put a time limit on scientific pursuit!"

Drew sighed, and laid back down on the table.  "All right.  What's next?"

Mrs. Wakeman snapped a dark welder's mask over her face.  "Thermal conductivity tests!"  She held up a torch, pulled the trigger, and a five-foot long tongue of flame blasted into the air.

Drew stared, dumbstruck, as the flame lit her face with an eerie flickering light, then groaned in resignation, rolling his eyes.

"Doc, I think this could be the beginning of a dysfunctional friendship."

* * *

THE END

* * *


End file.
